The Further Shore

Talks given from 1/6/77 to 30/6/77

Darshan Diary

CHAPTER 1

Blessings on your journey to the further shore beyond darkness 1 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: Just that I hope to make more progress with myself. I’ve been working on myself, and I hope I get somewhere with it.... It’s so joyous being here.]

You will grow every day. Just relax and meditate and sing and dance and forget the whole world!

This community is to forget the whole world. Now this community is your world and nothing else exists, so get lost in it, utterly lost.

And you will grow.... Growth is very easy if we allow it to happen, and the way to allow it to happen is to be joyful, cheerful. Growth happens in laughter... growth happens in innocence. Growth happens when you are dancing and singing. When you are moving, your spirit moves too. When you are not moving, your spirit also gets stuck.

Spiritual growth is just like a shadow: if you dance, it dances; if you become sad, it becomes sad; if you laugh, it laughs. So let laughter be your goal. Mm? – that is the virtue to be learned. Never be sad! Let there be a thousand and one reasons to be sad, but don’t be sad; find a way to be happy and to laugh. And if one is insistent, one can find something to laugh about and something to be happy for in every situation.

It is only a question of our choice. The world consists of both things: of bliss, of misery. If you want to choose bliss, it is available; it is only a question of choice. You have to just shift your awareness and it is there.

So if sometimes you find some cause to be unhappy, immediately start looking for something to be happy about; there is no reason to be unhappy, and you will always find something to be happy about. I have never seen any situation in which something cannot be found.

There are people who can find something wrong in every situation and who will be unhappy. And there are people who will find something good in every situation and who will be grateful... and that’s what I call being religious.

The irreligious person goes on looking for the negative, for the dark, for the black side. He is negative; he lives in the no. The religious person lives in the yes. His life is nothing but a’yea-saying’; he says yes! And he always finds something or other to be happy about.

There are thorns and there are flowers – it depends on you what you are going to choose. So be careful and choose flowers.

It is going to happen... growth is going to happen!

My blessings for your journey to the further shore beyond darkness!

Prem means love and pranava means the primal sound. The mystic experience is that life consists of a subtle sound. The basic element, the basic constituent of existence is not matter, it is sound. It is not even electricity as physicists say; it is harmony. But the sound is not a word; it has no meaning, it is meaningless. It is pure music. That’s why we become thrilled so much by music. It touches something primal in our energy.

The language of music is universal – it simply goes deep into the heart. It knows no east, it knows no west, it knows no white, no black. It recognises no one as a Chinese, no one as an Indian, no one as a German. It simply goes deep into the heart; it is universal.

In fact this cuckoo (whose song is coming from somewhere in the garden) you can understand as much as another cuckoo can; it is universal. The wind passing through the trees creating a certain music is understood by everyone. If we don’t understand then the problem is with us, with our noisy mind. Once our noise settles the messages are very loud and very clear.

The whole existence speaks. Even when it is silent it speaks... even silence carries a message. The whole existence is very vocal, and the ultimate source is pranava. This is the soundless sound, the sound of silence. That’s what one has to seek and to become one with. And it is just there, close to your navel, just two inches below the navel.

So for you, my specific suggestion is that whenever you have time, just close your eyes, go into your belly. Settle just two inches below the navel, abide there, and you will attain to great joy.

The juices will start flowing, and you will feel tremendously satisfied for no reason at all; you will feel a wave of contentment continuously arising. And whenever you feel that you are distracted, disturbed, tense, just close your eyes and go back into the belly; settle there.

The West thinks that the mind is in the head, but the east has been thinking for centuries that the mind is in the belly. When the western people came across this idea for the first time, they laughed; they thought this was foolish!

Buddhist scriptures say that man thinks through the belly. They mean something else. They don’t mean the thinking that we know as thinking: they mean universal consciousness. By the mind they don’t mean the brain. The brain is in the head but it is just an instrument in the hands of the mind, and the mind is in the belly.

Freudian analysis comes a little closer to it in the concept of the unconscious, but it is still far away.

Our existence is rooted in the belly. There we are one with the whole; it is from there that we live.

So go there again and again. Whenever you feel distracted, just go – and you will be able to. Close your eyes and just settle there.

That is your centre, and by and by you will start hearing a sound. I’m not saying that you have to create this sound – it is uncreated – but by and by, the more you settle in the belly, the more you will hear a sound which is very strange.

When it happens for the first time it is unbelievable; one feels ’Have I gone crazy or what?’ It fills you from the toes to the head; ripples of it come. It surrounds you, it overwhelms you and it is really great! You forget the whole around you. You become that sound, you pulsate with it.

That sound is very close to the sound ’aum’... Not exactly ’aum’ – this is just an indication of it – but very close, almost like it. That’s why ’aum’ became one of the most important sounds in India, mm?

There have existed three religions in India: Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism. They differ in all their concepts – their philosophies are absolutely contradictory to each other, they refute each other –

but about one thing they are in agreement, and that is the sound ’aum’, because you cannot deny the existential.

That sound exists in the mohammedan ’amin’ and the christian ’amen’ – that ’aum’. The sound is so subtle that you can hear it as ’amen’, or ’amin’ or ’aum’, but it is the same sound; these are interpretations. That sound is called ’pranava’.

[A sannyasin says he has a problem relating to women. Whenever something starts developing between him and a woman, part of him seems bent on destroying it: I’m just forming a big knot in here (touching his belly), you know. The energy’s just imploding and getting hard and cynical about everything, and I feel pretty stuck with it.]

Basically that is the human dilemma – every human being is in that – because half of man is still animal. Only half of man’s being has arisen above the animal, so there is a continuous conflict. One part of you wants to do this; another part wants to do that. One part wants to create; another is ready to destroy. One wants to love; another is ready to hate. One is very very kind, compassionate; another is very cruel, hard, violent, aggressive. But this is how it is, and whatsoever you choose, the other will create the trouble.

If you choose your animal part, then your human part is against it. The animal part also has a few beauties in it. It is wild, free, amoral, spontaneous. It knows no boundaries, it is unconfined. It is sheer delight in a way. If you choose it, the human part feels very very disturbed, miserable, because your spontaneity tends to become indulgence, your freedom becomes licence, your amorality tends to become immorality, your freedom becomes a danger to others. You start becoming anti-social; you can become criminal any moment.

So the human part starts being afraid; it freaks out! It starts creating trouble. It says, ’What are you doing? Pull yourself up, control yourself, discipline yourself.’

If you follow the human part it is more civilised, more graceful, more tender, soft, delicate... it has many virtues. If you listen to it, the animal part rebels and says ’What are you turning into just a slave? In the name of softness you are becoming lousy, dull, dead. In the name of discipline you have turned into a slave. In the name of morality you have lost all your spontaneity. In the name of society you are no more an individual! Where is your freedom? Where is your soul?’

So this is the human dilemma, mm? Don’t look at it as your personal problem; that is not the way to look at any problem. No problem is personal in a way. Each problem is everybody’s problem, more or less. A difference of degree may be there but that is not of much importance. Look at each problem as human – then it is easier to solve because then you can stand aloof. Look at it from a distance, then you are not involved personally. You can be more an observer and you can come to more impartial judgements. So don’t take it as personal; that is one of my basic approaches. Always treat a problem as universal, as human, then things are easier. Then you can look at the totality of it.

When you think ’It is my problem’, you are too worried; in that worry, you cannot think. Worry is one of the basically destructive qualities of the mind which does not allow thinking. Worry is not thinking. Thinking is never worried; thinking is a very relaxed phenomenon. Worry is too tense; it cannot think. It moves into the same groove again and again and again. It is simply confusion gone berserk. Everything rushes in, rushes out, but there is never any conclusion. It is like a wheel that goes on moving in the same rut.

So don’t be worried about it.... Look at it from a distance. It is everybody’s problem; this is how man is. At this point, man is at the middle stage: he is no more an animal, he is not yet totally man, so there is a tension in the being. Now, this tension has to be solved but in such a way that the solution is not more dangerous than the illness itself.

So you have to choose all the qualities of the wild animal in you. They have many qualities; the wild animal is not just to be condemned. It has something very beautiful, tremendously beautiful: the spontaneity, the freedom, the wildness, the simplicity, the innocence. They have to be chosen, they have to be absorbed into a higher synthesis. And the human also has something to say....

From the human take awareness, and from the animal take spontaneity. From the human take responsibility, from the animal take innocence. Start working on a higher synthesis then both will be satisfied and will not be at each other’s neck. Your conflict slowly, slowly, will cease, and you will come to a point where both have become a support to each other. Otherwise you can become schizophrenic, you can split in two.

Become a triangle. Right now you are only two angles; the third angle is missing. Join these two angles and the third, the higher angle. Let the lower two become the base and let there be a pyramid; the higher angle has to be created.

Love; love with responsibility and yet be wild in your love, be spontaneous in your love. I am not saying the path is going to be all roses, no. The higher your target, the more difficult is going to be the path, the more thorny will be the path; it is an uphill task.

Many people have chosen the easier way. A few have chosen to be animals; they become criminals.

They fall out of society, they are the drop-outs. They don’t bother about any humanity or anything.

They simply want to live and do their thing, so they are doing their thing. But they are not the real flowers. They may be carrying flowers in their hands and in their buttonholes, and they may even be called ’the flower generation’, but they are not flowers because they have not bloomed. They are just drop-outs; they are cowards.

The word ’hippie’ is good. It means one who has shown his hip, an escapist who has run away from the battle of life, from the challenge of life – a run-away, an escapist, a coward. These are the people; they have always been there.

Certainly the animal part has an attraction, naturally, obviously, but one never feels fulfilled with it: something goes on gnawing at your heart. You can never be at ease with the lower. You can slip into it; but again and again you will find that you are bigger than it, it cannot contain you. You have to come out of it and you feel confined too much. It is a regression.

It is as if you have become grown-up and you are still living in a child’s skin; it is a bondage. Nobody can go back; the animal is gone forever. Man cannot move backwards; the only movement possible is forwards.

If innocence is to be attained, it has to be higher, not lower than man, not lower than you are already.

On some higher peak the innocence has to be attained again. Man has to become a child but not by becoming childish. Man has to become a child by becoming a saint.

So this is one – people choose the animal – but that is not my choice; that has not helped anybody.

The other choice, and that too is simple and comfortable, is that people become bourgeois, mm?

the middle-class bourgeois mind.

They look for comfort – a small house of their own, a car of their own, a family, children, a little prestige, holidays, radio, TV – and they are finished. They live a life of comfort, security. It is not that they are criminals; they have simply made compromises – but they have sold their souls.

I am neither for the criminal, the drop-out, nor am I for the bourgeois, because the bourgeois is missing his whole life, the joy of it. I am for a higher synthesis: one has to go beyond both these. So those who are with me are on a dangerous trip.

And it is not an easy thing; it is arduous. It is simple, but it is not easy. By simple I mean that if you understand it, it can be done, it is not impossible. But it is not easy: it will take its toll. You will have to pay the price for it, and you will have to pass through many many turmoils, many crises, many critical moments.

So don’t be worried. Take it as a challenge and not as a problem. Never think in terms of problems

– always think in terms of challenges. This is a challenge!

You love a woman, and then one part of you starts destroying it. So choose something from the part that is destroying it. Choose something from that destructive part which can help love – and there is something in it: the energy, the spontaneity of the wild animal, the force of aggression. Choose that part of it, and it will be satisfied because you have chosen something from it; you have not denied it completely.

Go on loving, become more aware and more alert, and when something starts destroying the relationship listen to it, meditate over it. What exactly is it that is trying to destroy it? What is the message? Go into it and don’t be judgemental. just go into it: what is the message? What does it want to convey?

If you really want to destroy something and it is too much, then destroy something else. There are many things to be destroyed. The destruction can be channelised: jealousy has to be destroyed, not love; possessiveness has to be destroyed, not love. If you are too much in the mood to destroy, I will give you the whole garden; there are so many weeds! Destroy the weeds – but don’t destroy the roses! Let your destructive feeling be fulfilled, let the destructive quality be employed.

So look: if you want to destroy something, then destroy! There are so many things to be destroyed.

Why not fulfill that desire? But there is no need to destroy the roses; that is simply foolish.

My feeling is that you have not watched it; you have not tried to listen to the message of it, you have not allowed it to say what it wants to say. You have been pushing it away; you don’t want to listen.

Then sometimes in unaware moments it catches hold of you, it possesses you, and then it destroys the roses. It will destroy the roses....

Listen to it and put it to some job. The world needs so many things to be destroyed and demolished.

Use that energy and you will be fulfilled, and it will not be destructive to the roses, to your love.

In fact, if you can enjoy jealousy, your love will flower, your love will become more and more refined.

If you just remove the weeds, your roses will grow higher, the bushes will become thicker, the flowers will grow bigger, because the same soil is supporting the weeds. Remove the weeds!

[A sannyasin says he is disturbed because although much has been happening, he doesn’t feel connected to Osho.]

That too will happen – wait! Lots of things have to happen before that can happen.

[He answers: But it seems the last time that I was here I felt my connection with you was much stronger.]

Many times you will feel it and many times you will lose it – because it happens on many layers. A man is not a single layer, a man is many layers... you are many people.

On the first layer the connection happens. Then my whole work is to destroy that layer so that you can penetrate to the second layer. When that layer is destroyed, many things will happen; then that connection is gone. Again, you feel that you are not connected to me.

Now this time it will happen on a deeper level, and it will take a longer time to happen, but when it happens you will feel thrilled because then you will see that the first was nothing. But this will happen many times – nearabout seven times. Again the second layer will be destroyed, because that is the only way to reach to the third; again you will feel lost.

There are many people who unfortunately escape. When the first layer connection is broken they think that the connection is broken; now there is nothing to do – they escape. This has to be consciously understood: it will happen at least seven times.

When all the layers are gone and you have penetrated to your being, to your very core, you are connected to me forever; then there is no problem. Then ’I’ and ’you’ are not two: ’I’ is ’thou’ and

’thou’ is ’I’. Then there is no problem. We are one.

At that point, the whole existence is one. But before that point many times you will be joined, many times you will be disconnected. It is a constant shunting.

Nothing to be worried about.

[The sannyasin then says he was a therapist leading groups in the West. He would like to lead groups at the ashram, but is not sure if it is just an ego-trip.

Osho checks his energy.]

Everything is going perfectly well, and you can become a good therapist... but don’t make it a trip, don’t make it an ego-game. Slowly grow into it. If you try to play it as an ego-game you will be very very disturbed by it; it will be a tension on your head. Just let it grow as a hobby, slowly, by the side, unconcerned, as if it is just a play.

And wait.... My feeling is that first you should start in the West. Here it will be difficult for you to start.

First start in the West; there it will be easier. Next time you come I will give you some groups to do here, but first start in the West.

Here you will find it difficult because the people who are doing groups have done so many. Here everybody is almost a therapist! So it will be difficult for you: it will make you very self-conscious. It will make you tense, and because of that tension you will not be happy. You can do it but you will not be happy... and then it is pointless. If you are not happy, it is not going to help anybody.

The healer should be a very very happy person: flowing, cheerful, at ease. The therapist should be such that in his contact everybody becomes relaxed. Mm? and that is the very quality of happiness: if you are happy, people feel relaxed with you. They start opening, they open up. They have nothing to hide from you, they are not afraid of you, they don’t defend themselves.

If you are too much of a groupleader they start defending. When they start defending you become more aggressive; when you become more aggressive, they become closed. A groupleader has to be a person who is not really a leader at all – at the most a facilitator, at the most a coordinator, at the most a midwife, but not a leader. The very word ’leader’ is political and dangerous; it is an ego-word.

You can become a therapist, the possibility is there, and I will make one out of you, but wait. Here just relax, don’t become tense about it. Next time you go to Europe, continue working there. Mm?

Good!

CHAPTER 2

To be with a master is just a device

2 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says he is continually changing his mind about staying or going to the West: So there’s never an acceptance of the way the thing is. It’s always wanting the other, and then as soon as that possibility happens, I don’t want that either.]

One has to go through this suffering; this is part of human growth. By and by one learns that it is futile, but one always learns the hard way because one learns only by one’s own experience.

A thousand and one times you will experience the stupidity of it. Only then slowly, slowly, does it penetrate into the unconscious and become an experience.

Just by passing through a certain situation, it does not become an experience. It touches you only superficially and passes by. But many times it will touch on the same track again and again and again. Hammering one day opens your deeper realm to it. Then you see it as if in a lightning flash and it is absolutely clear. In that moment something is transformed. You have experienced the stupidity of it, the futility of it, the fruitlessness of it. Then it will not bother you again.

When you are here with me, you forget your mind. That happens to everybody who is in love with me. When I am here I become more important, your mind becomes less important. That’s what love means: you love a person – the person becomes more important than you. Then I overwhelm you and your mind has no say in it, so you feel perfectly good.

One day you will learn that it has nothing to do with my presence. In fact, the basic mechanism is that whenever your mind has nothing to say, has no say, you will be at ease. This is just a device

– to be with a master – to see the fact of it: if the mind is put aside even for a few seconds, you are totally different. Then there is no misery, no dichotomy, no tension. Everything is good. You are blessed and you can bless the whole existence.

See the point of it! The master is just an excuse to put the mind aside. The basic phenomenon is that the mind is put aside; that is to be remembered.

Whenever you are able to put the mind aside you will be in the same space. Experiencing again and again that the mind only brings misery, that the mind is hell, that the mind promises heaven but never delivers it.... Mm? that’s what is happening. You are here; the mind says heaven is there.

Heaven is always somewhere else; it is never here. That’s the mind trick. It says it is there, not here; it is that, not this.

The mind needs distance to function; it cannot function in the present. Whenever you are in the present you are happy.

Heaven is here, now is enough. But the mind needs distance, so it goes on putting heaven there –

the further away the better. Then you reach there in the hope that you will find peace and you will find happiness and you will find this and that, but the moment you reach there, that there becomes here; it is no more there. And the mind cannot be happy in the here so it again projects onto somewhere else.

Maybe the place that you have left becomes your projection, but see what the mathematics of the mind is – that it has to project somewhere else, either in the past or in the future, but it cannot exist here. So it always postpones; the mind is a postponement, a perpetual postponement. The mind is tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow, never today. But this has to be seen again and again; there is no easy way to learn it. Otherwise wisdom is always available – buddhas have always said the same thing – but it has to be learned the hard way. You will have to pass through the misery of it, you will have to be deceived by the mind.

Many millions of times you will again and again hope with the mind and again and again you will be frustrated. You will move with the mind and it will lead you into a ditch. It will again and again land you in more misery. Only out of that continuous failure will you one day see the whole point.

Then it is no more intellectual, it is not even understanding. It is your very being; the arrow has penetrated the very heart. Now it is not a proposition, not a hypothesis, not somebody’s advice, not something that you believe in, not an inference. It is your existential experience. You have seen it, it is finished! That very day ’there’ disappears, ’that’ disappears, and with that disappearance there is no mind: you are, only you are.

That state of no-mind comes sometimes when you are close to me. But go, there again see the game of the mind, and come back! Mm? one has to pass through that misery. It cannot be avoided, because if you avoid it, then whatsoever I am saying will always remain a belief: it will never become your own authentic understanding.

[A sannyasin says he has just split with his partner so he is feeling unsettled. Osho says it is natural to feel uprooted, but to be always moving, never static, is good. People usually die around thirty, he says, and are buried some forty years later. Never become a family man, bourgeois; avoid middle-classness like the plague!

The sannyasin then says that in the West he became more aware of unconscious conditioning of society, which seems to become stronger as he gets older. He is frightened by it.]

It is there, mm mm. It is there and it becomes stronger the older we become.

... There is no need to be frightened; just awareness is enough. Fear never helps. If you are frightened the system is winning over you, because if you are frightened there is a possibility for the system to overcome you. The very fear will make you weak.

There is no need to fear: it is a dead system – you are an alive individual.

That has to be remembered again and again, mm? One keeps forgetting, that’s natural, but if you remember it again and again that’s enough, that will do. The older you are, the more you start looking for comfort, convenience and things like that. These are the ways of the system to catch hold of you; these are the briberies of the system: that’s how it bribes people into things.

A younger person is more stubborn, a younger person is more foolish, a younger person is ready to take risks. The older you become, the more you feel that how you were living is difficult now. It is better to settle, have a wife, have children, have a small house, a car. It is enough; one should start settling. The system starts becoming powerful.

The system is never powerful on young minds... and a mind can remain young even when the body becomes old. The mind and body need not be old together. In fact the mind has no inner necessity to be old; it can remain young forever. The body has an inner necessity to be old, it cannot be young forever, but the mind can be young forever; there is no necessity for it to age. If the mind becomes old, it is just our mistake. We were not aware enough to keep it young.

So just remember: remain young! That’s the whole message of sannyas. It is anti-system, it is against establishment. Good.

[An ashram resident had left and now wished to return, and was told it was not possible yet. He said he felt like there was something basically wrong with him, maybe a negative attitude.]

Nothing is basically wrong with you; nothing is basically wrong with anybody anywhere in the world!

Nothing is basically wrong... and the negative is just a shadow of the positive.

If you pay too much attention to the negative, it becomes important and then you tend to forget the positive. It is a shadow phenomenon: you walk in the sun and a shadow is created. But somebody can go on looking at your shadow and forget about you. The shadow cannot exist alone, it exists with you. That’s why it is negative: it cannot exist on its own.

The positive can exist on its own; the positive is not dependent on the shadow. You come into the house: the shadow disappears and you are still there. If the sun sets or clouds come over the sun you will be there and the shadow will disappear. The shadow was a by-product, it cannot exist on its own: it is not possible that you disappear and the shadow exists.

So the negative is never a problem; it is always with the positive. In fact it shows that the positive is there.

When a man doubts, it simply shows that he trusts! Without trust doubt cannot exist! Trust can exist without doubt, certainly, but doubt cannot exist without trust. So when somebody doubts, my whole effort is to bring to his notice that the doubt exists only because he trusts.

You need a shift in consciousness: don’t look too much at the shadow – it is meaningless – look at the positive. Get in tune with the positive. Nothing is wrong.... And even this leaving the ashram has been of great help.

Sometimes things help in such a mysterious way, sometimes curses become blessings. One just has to use the situation... and you have used it very beautifully. There was no necessity to – you could even have escaped, you could have taken it absolutely negatively but you didn’t: you remained positive.

[The soma group is present. One member said it was an incredible trip, almost like an explosion: I never experienced so much love for my parents.]

We are carrying incredible worlds within our souls, and we are not aware of them. We have the seeds of incredible experiences of love, ecstasy, but we have never allowed them to explode over our being, we have never allowed them to pulsate us. The whole effort here is to make you able to pulsate, to vibrate with your inner rhythm, with no inhibitions, with no taboos.

And the day you can feel love for your parents, you feel love for the whole existence. The day you can feel love for your parents is the day you understand that god is! God is dead because parents are dead!

Once you start feeling how grateful you are to your parents.... They have given you birth, they have brought you in life; it is because of them you breathe, you love, you see, you hear. These green trees, those flowers, this wind – all this is possible because of your parents.... Then you start feeling a great gratitude arising towards the whole.

Psychologists say that god is a projection of your father. In a very roundabout way they are right.

They use this thing as if they are condemning god – that is not true, but god is in a way related to the feeling that you have for your father, for your mother. Once you are cut from your parents you are cut from existence itself. Then you become an island; you don’t have any continuity with the totality. You are a freak, a stranger, you don’t know why you are here. There is no meaning, because meaning exists with the whole.

When you are related to your parents, you are related to the whole past. It is infinite! When you are related to your parents you start feeling related to the future too. Because if you are related to your parents, only then can you be related to your children; there is no other way.

If you are not related to your parents, how can you be related to your children? If you are cut off from your parents you will feel cut off from your children. They will be just accidental. You can tolerate them at the most but you cannot really love them.

Love exists with this continuity: in the past, the parents – in the future, the children. And when you see this continuity – that one day you were not, one day you will again be no more, but this life into which you come and disappear continues, this ocean of life continues and you are just like a wave in it.... That oceanic existence is what god is.

Primal therapy should become part of all theologies, all religions. Each temple should have it as a basic process.

There was an ancient university, Nalanda, in India – a buddhist university: never again and never before has there ever been a thing like it. Thousands of students lived residentially; it was a huge campus, of miles. There were four gates to the university and great scholars were the gate guards.

The examination before one entered into the university was taken at the gates. Mm? – sometimes for months the student had to wait outside the campus. Unless he was able to satisfy the gate guard that he was worthy enough, there was no way to enter the university. Not even a visitor was allowed to get in; even a visitor had to pass through certain examinations. Sometimes years had to pass before a student could enter!

To me, each temple should have gates where one has to pass through primal therapy. Unless one has passed through primal therapy one should not be allowed to enter into a temple, because there will be no relationship with god.

You have passed through a very beautiful experience.

[The tantra group is also present. One member says: I’m always hanging between polarities. I never know what I want; it makes me very crazy. I feel it must be related with my belly. It’s always cold, always cold. And now I’ve been crying for eight months: I’m always crying and crying.

Osho asks several questions, and checks her energy.]

Just a few things to be understood: one is that you have done enough crying. [The group leader’s]

suggestion is right that crying will help; ordinarily it does – but you have done it for so long that it has become habitual. It won’t help now. If you had not done it for so long it would have helped. Mm? –

it has become habitual now, it has become a rut. You can cry but it will not go deep. You know how to do it so you will do it, but it will go only so far, and it has been going that far all this time.

So for a few days stop crying completely. Instead of crying, start laughing, mm? Laughing will shake your belly more than crying; it shakes the belly more than crying. It will make the whole belly throb and will bring warmth to it.

Sometimes crying can even create coldness, because crying has become very much associated with sadness. People rarely cry when they are happy; they cry only when they are unhappy, so it has become associated with unhappiness. Unhappiness is cold, happiness is warm. People laugh when they are happy.

Laughter is going to help you right now, so stop crying completely. Whenever you feel crying comes, start laughing. Mm? – tickle yourself and start laughing. Laugh as much as you can. Laugh so much that sometimes laughter brings tears, and that will be of tremendous help. Then tears will start becoming associated with laughter... and that is one of the revolutionary steps – to make tears come out of laughter.

After one month report to me. After one month we will see whether now crying will be good; but right now laughter is good. In the morning when you get up, the first thing to do is laugh.

Just sit in your bed and start laughing for no reason at all. And really laugh so hard that you start feeling that the belly will burst: hold your belly and laugh. You will find it difficult only for two, three days, then it will become very easy – because the whole thing is so ridiculous that one starts laughing at one’s own laughter! But that is the first thing to start in the morning.

And in the night the last thing before you go to sleep, have a good laugh, mm? – that will warm your belly. It is cold, but nothing to be worried about; it will be warmed up!

[Another group member says: In the group many people told me that they love me and I was seeing that I don’t love myself enough.]

There are very few people in the world who love themselves – only very rare people – so relax! You are a normal person; very abnormal people love themselves! People don’t become aware of it, but this group has made you aware of it. You have a clear-cut intellectual understanding: that’s why it became very very crystal-clear to you that you don’t love yourself. Even others could see it, mm? It is on your face, written on your face, that you don’t love yourself. You are an honest person.

It is very rarely that people love themselves, but it is not written on their faces. They keep two books: their real book is hidden, the unreal book is on their face. You don’t have two books, you have a single book. You don’t make double entries, so it is written on your face. It is good. You are a sincere person, and with a sincere person there is a way. With the insincere there is no way.

If you recognise the fact that you don’t love yourself then there is a possibility that you can... because this is sheer stupidity not to love oneself. If you don’t love yourself then who is going to? If not you, then who? And if not now, when?

The first and the most fundamental thing is to love yourself – then others will love, they will follow, but nobody is going to break the ice if you don’t love yourself. But it is good that you have understood it.

So start loving, learn to love yourself, be more soft with yourself. You have been taught to be hard.

You have tried to discipline yourself, you have tried to be in control. But it is there; it will come up.

From this moment, start loving yourself, be more tender to yourself. Don’t be hard, don’t be cruel!

Give a little joy to your body, to your mind. It is your mind and you have to take care of it. It is your body; treat it as a temple. And small things make much difference....

You take a shower every day: you can do it very unconcernedly, you can do it very lovingly. You can feel the water falling on the body. You can enjoy the feel, the freshness, the joy that comes to the body – how every cell of the body starts feeling fresh. You can enjoy it is your body: your body is feeling good. When you eat food you can just go on stuffing like a duty....

From this moment start doing just small things, mm? and within three weeks you will see that that thing which was hidden inside has come up.

[Osho reiterates what he has said often before, that we are conditioned from an early age to love everyone – parents, siblings, teachers, priests – but not to love ourselves.]

So start loving yourself, and if somebody loves you... and there are so many people to love! There are two needs which are love needs: one is to love somebody and one is to be loved by somebody

– and both are basic needs. Love is a double-edged sword: it is not only that somebody should love you; it is also that you should love somebody.

So start loving yourself, and if somebody comes and takes the initiative in loving you, feel grateful and don’t think that she or he is wrong. You are wrong, because god never creates anybody who is not worthy! Worth is intrinsic in life. You are a worthy man, you are an end unto yourself.

... Treat yourself really well. Join the music group in the night, dance, sufi dancing.

Very good! The group has helped you.

[The sannyasin then says: I have been almost impotent all my life and I think that if I cleared my mind.... ]

Yes, it will go! Impotence is almost always a psychological phenomenon. If you don’t love yourself, what will you do with potency? It is useless! So when you don’t love yourself the body dries up.

Start loving and you will start flowing. Nothing to be worried about.

CHAPTER 3

In this community everything is allowed

3 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who has just completed the primal group says: I feel very young and unable to be grown-up. And it frightens me... My body feels very unloose – as if it’s not me. I feel very separate from it and with what’s going on in me.]

I can see it... mm mm. The primal succeeded, that’s why you are feeling like this. The process of the primal is to bring you back to the point from where you lost track of your natural life.

For example, a boy or a girl grows up to a certain age naturally – four years old, five years old, at the most seven years old, in more primitive societies, ten, twelve years. It depends on many things –

the parents, the society, the culture – but somewhere between the fourth and the fourteenth year....

[She says: I feel about twelve.]

You feel about twelve? Exactly right! Somewhere there you lost track of your natural growth and you started growing an artificial being. That is the whole social effort; socialisation they call it. At that age, somewhere neat twelve, you became a social being; up to that moment you were a natural being. So a rift happened.

So the primal worked. You should be happy that it worked. It creates trouble, but if you can take the courage and start growing towards your natural inclination, soon the trouble will disappear and you will attain to an authentic being. And this will not take long.... Consciousness can grow very fast.

Now your body is grown-up; just your consciousness is hanging behind.

How old are you as far as the body is concerned?

[She replies: Thirty-two.]

Thirty-two? Mm – so there is a twenty-year gap between your being and your body, but that twenty-year gap can be covered in twenty minutes even... sometimes twenty seconds, sometimes one second. Sometimes it may take twenty years; it depends how courageous you are. If you become frightened and you start playing the old game again, then you can destroy the work that primal has done.

Be courageous! – that’s my whole idea here. Be courageous; in this community everything is allowed.

Nobody is trying to control you and nobody is imposing any goals from the outside. You will be loved as you are; you will be loved more if you are really true, so become spontaneous. Start moving, behaving like a twelve-year-old girl.

It will be embarrassing; nothing to be worried about. Start falling in love, in puppy love, again, mm?

– which you missed in the past. Fulfill it, let that be completed. Become shy like a twelve-year-old girl; start fantasising and dreaming like a twelve-year-old girl. Allow it, don’t repress it any more because then you will undo the whole thing. And I can see even on your face that that child is there; in your eyes the child is there.

Your body is grown-up so the body will pull you, but you have to resist that temptation. Sometimes you will look foolish, mm? – if you behave like a twelve-year-old child you will look foolish – but nothing to be worried about: be foolish! There is nothing wrong in it; sometimes it is very very beneficial.

It is better to be foolish and true than to be untrue and wise, because ultimately truth is wisdom and untruth is stupidity. Go with truth; even if it is foolish in the beginning you will find that by and by it turns into great wisdom.

So start behaving like a twelve-year-old child. For a few days forget your age... and you will become younger. It will be greatly refreshing for your body energy, it will be a rejuvenation. Because we are as old as we think we are. If you can really trust that you are twelve, you are twelve, and the body will start behaving like a twelve-year-old’s.

There will be problems; they have to be faced. No need to hide, no need to escape from them. Be natural, spontaneous and allow all kinds of dangers. I am here to protect you, mm? Soon you will bridge the gap of that twenty years.

Once that gap is bridged, you will be back into this body, thirty-two years old, with a thirty-two-year old consciousness also. Then there will be a synchronicity between you and your body. That’s why you are feeling separate; they are falling apart, they are not together. The bridge is broken, that’s why you are feeling disconnected. They are good indications, tremendously good indications; the therapy has succeeded.

You will be connected again and really connected this time. The other connection that was there was not a real connection; it was just so-so. It was a kind of identity rather than a connection. You were not rooted in it. How can you be rooted in it? When you are twelve years old, how can you be rooted in a thirty-year-old body? That twenty-year gap is there. You can deceive, you can pretend, you can believe, but the gap is there.

Now that gap can be bridged: the opportunity has opened up – now the wound can heal. So don’t hide that wound again. Let it be opened, allow it to be in the sun and the air, and let it heal. The connection will come but you are not to bring it. You have to simply wait.

[Osho suggests the tantra and leela groups. She says she is afraid of tantra because it feels too grown-up!]

... That’s my whole approach: whenever I see that somebody is frightened of something, I push.

If children are allowed total freedom with sex, tantra will not be needed at all. Children are more sexual than grown-up people... repressed, but more sexual. In fact their sexuality is total sexuality...

and that has been one of the basic misunderstandings in the modern world. Even freud was not able to understand that point.

A child is not genital. His sexuality is total, his whole body is sexual. You see a small child sucking his thumb or toe. Sucking the toe is almost as joyful as masturbation for a small child. His whole body is genital, each cell of the body is sexual. His sexuality is not confined yet, not local yet; he is sexual all over. You tickle him from anywhere and he is sexual.

Because of this, there has been a great misunderstanding about the children: people think they are not sexual. They are not genital, that’s true. Later on the sexuality will come more and more to the genitals, will become narrowed, confined, local.

Then your head is not sexual, your hands are not sexual, your body loses its erotic quality... and that is not good! That’s why people cannot attain to a total orgasm. How can you attain to a total orgasm if your body has lost erotic qualities? You can attain to total orgasm only when the whole body functions erotically.

Women are more erotic than men – their sex is less local than man’s. Man’s sex becomes very very localised: his whole idea of sex is genital – the remaining parts of his body become dead and dull.

That’s why women remain more beautiful than men, remain more alive than men, remain younger than men and live longer than men.

One of the reasons is that their sexuality still remains unconfined to the genitals – not totally unconfined, but still unconfined, more unconfined than man. They have more erotic zones in the body still alive. A woman can be as erotic in her ear lobes or in her neck as on her lips or breasts.

Man is completely dead and dull. But a child, boy or girl, is completely erotic, totally erotic.

The society makes sex localised. It is afraid of that much eroticism, it is afraid of that much joy all over the body. So it helps to cripple it and forces sexuality to be in the service of generating. It is no more fun and no more joy. It is just to give birth to children.

The society is interested in the society living; it is not interested in the individual and his joy, so all so-called religions preach that you should make love to a woman only when you want to procreate.

Mahatma gandhi in India used to say that if you make love to a woman not for the specific purpose of procreation, it is adultery; you are committing a sin. Now this is absurd, patent absurdness, but this is what the popes and the saints and the so-called religious people all over the whole world have been teaching down the ages. This is a trick to transform the whole of sex and its joy, into work, to destroy its fun its humour, to destroy its delight, to reduce it to something ugly – procreation; the very word is ugly.

Yes, if a child comes out of your delight, good, but if just to create a child you make love to a woman, then it has no fun, no delight in it. You are treating the woman as a factory, you are treating yourself as a factory.

So all societies cripple sexuality; they force it down to the minimum, and that minimum is the genitals.

Then the whole body becomes non-erotic – society is unafraid.

The tantric approach is to let that sexuality spread all over the body again, to let the whole body become erotic. Once the whole body becomes erotic all your activities attain to a quality of delight.

You eat but you eat in a different way: your eating has a sexual joy in it. It should have! You see, but your eyes have a sexual joy in them, a sexual light in them; it should be so! You hear but your ears are erotic. Mm? – the words go in like ripples of joy. You touch, but your touch is sexual, sensuous, alive, throbbing, pulsating. Whatsoever you do becomes a joy... and life can become a celebration only when the whole body functions joyfully.

That’s what the meaning of tantra is: tantra means expansion. The very word ’tantra’ means expansion – that which has been confined has to be expanded again.

Don’t be afraid, mm? First do tantra and then do leela. Leela will help you to be more playful.

And behave like a twelve-year-old child. You can have a small board on you saying ’I am twelve years old. Treat me that way – don’t treat me as a grown-up’. People will enjoy it!

[The enlightenment intensive group is present. One participant, returning to the West, says she does not love her family to whom she is returning shortly. She discovered that she knows nothing –

does not know what love is, what attachment is.

Osho says this is a good situation. Now her mind is a clean slate, the old building is demolished.

All false distinctions have to be done away with before we can see clearly; this is the first part of the work. Then only can the second phase, of creation, begin.

And families, he says, enforce love. When you are small, your parents demand love and respect from you. You may not feel it, but you compromise between your real feelings and what is expected of you because you are dependent on them for your survival.

The sannyasin says that she is repeating exactly the same pattern with her child. Osho says of course we will repeat the same patterns – unless we ourselves change.... ]

Passing through groups these structures are destroyed. Again you are thrown back into your childhood, again you are made available to alternatives, again you start seeing for the first time without any prejudice. Now your life is not at stake: if you don’t love your parents, your life is not at stake. Now you can afford not to love. To understand this – that now you can afford not to love – will give you a freedom. And this very freedom can grow into love again, but that will be totally different love and it will not be a discipline. You follow me?

Now you are free to decide: if you love, you love; if you don’t love, you don’t love. And I’m not saying that if you don’t love you are committing some crime. What can you do? Love is not something that one can do. If it is there, it is there; if it is not there, it is not there, and there is no condemnation in it.

So for the first time you are capable of taking account of your life. You can see whether you love or you don’t love... now no more deception. If you don’t love, you don’t love. And don’t think that you are committing some crime or some immorality; it’s perfectly okay.

If you accept this, then love can grow.

[She says: It was actually my husband I was talking about, not my parents.]

It is okay, husband or... that doesn’t matter, that doesn’t make any difference. That too is the same game we go on playing. Because we are very very repressed, all our games are false games.

Take hold of yourself, of your freedom. There is no need to disturb anybody, because they will not be able to understand; they have not passed through the things you have. There is no need to disturb anybody – just keep this in your inner world. Become more and more alert and watch.

If love grows, allow it to grow; if it doesn’t grow, don’t be worried. But don’t force it, that’s what I am insisting on: don’t force it this time. Wait, let the right season come for love to grow. If it grows, good.

And it always grows: if we can wait, if we can be patient, it always grows, because nobody can live without love. Love is such an inner necessity. It is like breathing: you cannot live without breathing, you cannot live without love.

So just wait. There may be an interval of a few days, a few weeks, and in that interval don’t say anything to anybody. On the surface go on playing the same game, but now this will be a game and you know that it is a game. Simply go on playing the game in the same way, inside go on watching.

Inside you know that now you are completely...

[She says: I can even pretend that I love as long as I’m alert about it being a game.]

Pretension is not the right word then, mm? It is just a game... it is just a game. Pretension means that you have taken it seriously. This is just a game. And I am saying to continue to play the game so that you can have a little chance to grow into love. The love will come... and I’m not saying that it will come for your husband; it may come for your husband, it may not come. It may come for somebody else. I’m not saying anything about for whom it will come. One thing is certain: love will come. It is possible for your husband, maybe, for your children, for your parents, maybe not. I’m not predicting for whom it will come. I’m predicting only one thing: that it will come! Your commitment should be towards love.

It is going to come, so wait... just to give it a chance. If you start telling people then you will get disturbed, they will get disturbed. Then you will create so much misery that you may lose this space that has become available; hence I say go on playing the game.

And when you know it is a game you can play it perfectly; there is nothing serious about it. It is almost as if in a drama you are playing the role of a wife. It is just acting, not even pretending; it is different from pretending. In the pretension you are also deceived.

My feeling is it will take at least a few weeks for you to be clear, and then things will become very very authentic. You will know what love is. Once you know what love is, then you will know what attachment is, because when you know the real coin you can immediately recognise the false, not otherwise. First taste the real and the unreal is revealed.

When will you be able to come back?... because you need to be here. Something has to be done still: half is done, now the creative part has to be done.

And don’t destroy what has happened to you. Be watchful and careful about it. It is of great importance. This state where you are not certain what is what is a great beginning. Don’t again become certain in a false way. Unless certainties arise of their own accord, wait. Whatsoever it costs pay the price and wait.

[Osho reminds her to continue meditating, and suggests that it will be helpful if she maintains contact with sannyasins living near her.]

[Another group participant says: I was wondering who I was following – is it you or myself?]

Yourself... and even if meanwhile you are following me, that is only to reach to yourself. It is just as when you look in a mirror: at whom are you looking – the mirror or yourself? In a way you are looking at the mirror, but in the mirror you are looking at yourself. That’s exactly the relationship between a master and a disciple: the master is a mirror!

You are looking at me, but only to look at yourself. If you forget about looking at yourself then I am no more a mirror to you, I am just a wall; then the relationship is meaningless. Unless a mirror reflects you it is not a mirror. You surrender to me so that I can give yourself back to you.

So finally you are following yourself, mm? – I am just a ’via media’... and that has to be remembered.

I only reflect you, I throw you back on yourself. I am a mirror; that’s the only function.

If I can fulfill that, if I can make you aware of your real face, my work is finished. Then there is no need for the mirror: you know your face, the mirror can be forgotten.

CHAPTER 4

Religion is a courting, not a conquering

4 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Jivan kavya: life poetry.

And poetry is the right approach towards life: prose is not the right approach. They are worlds apart

– poetry and prose – and they are the two approaches to know.

By prose I mean the logical approach, the argumentative, the rational, and by poetry I mean the feeling approach, the aesthetic approach, the intuitive approach. Prose is male, poetry is female...

and life is known only through the female. It is through the feminine that life exists – the very centre of it is feminine, and sannyas has to be more and more feminine.

That is the difference between religion and science too: science is more male-oriented, religion is more female-oriented. Religion is soft, science is hard. Science is more like aggression, an effort to conquer nature; religion is more like courting with nature, not conquering, persuading nature, loving nature. Yes, love too conquers, but in a totally different way.... So become more and more poetic.

[The vipassana group is present. One participant says she sees things when they come within her range of vision but feels nothing inside in response... ]

I can understand. This is good; this is the first step. First one has to see things clearly, only then in the next step does feeling arise. If without a clear vision feeling arises, it will be more like sentimentality than like feeling. It will not be real feeling; it will be emotional, sentimental. It will make things foggier for you; it will not help.

Good – at this moment you need a clear vision, a clarity to see things as they are. Yes, the bird is singing, the trees swaying, the wind is passing through the trees and you see thoughts passing by. You simply see them, you don’t have any feeling for them. Good – because right now if feeling comes you will be clouded; then the clarity will be lost.

Right now, go deep into this clarity. Let things be absolutely clear, crystal clear, and don’t hanker for feeling so fast, don’t be in a hurry. Once the clarity is complete, total, you will find one day that suddenly feeling is arising. And you will be surprised because that will be a totally new thing that you have not known before. Then you will be able to understand the difference between a sentimental state of mind and a feeling state of mind.

A feeling state has no fog: it is as clear as this clarity – when a thought passes by and you see it.

Exactly in the same way a feeling passes by and you see it; you remain a witness.

My feeling about you is that methods like vipassana will suit you very very deeply. In fact you are not an emotional type at all. So once you understand that that is not your type, things will be very easy.

You are a born buddhist; you cannot be a sufi. Yes, you can be a zen nun but you cannot be a sufi, you cannot be a devotee. But there is no need; that is enough! You will go through it, you will reach by going through it.

So don’t become worried about it, otherwise you will be disturbing the process; simply get in tune with it. That’s how it should be. It’s perfectly right.

[Another group member says she thinks that feelings are egoistic; then she thinks, well why not be egoistic?]

Feeling is not egoistic, nor is thought. A feeling can exist without the ego; in fact it can only exist perfectly when there is no ego. A thought exists very very clearly when there is no ego. Ego has nothing to do with feeling and thought. It is something else. Ego is the notion of continuity. Try to understand....

One thought passes by, another thought passes by, then another. Each single thought is atomic; it is not related to the other, there is no bridge. Mm? – they flick: one thought gone, another, another, they go on. The ego is the idea that they are joined together, that there is a continuity, that there is a substance behind them.

Let me tell you one famous story of a buddhist monk – his name was Nagsena....

A king had invited him to come to his palace so he came, but he said to the messenger, ’Tell the king that because he has invited me I will come, but in fact there is nobody there inside me. Tell him that Nagsena exists not! Of course he has invited me so I will come, but tell him this much – that there is no Nagsena to come.’

The king was very puzzled – this was stupid or absurd or mad! If there were no nagsena, then who was going to come? But he waited; then Nagsena came. He came in the chariot of the king – the king had sent his chariot, a golden chariot with many horses.

The king came to the gate, received Nagsena and said, ’I welcome you, but I’m puzzled. Since that day the messenger came back I have been thinking and thinking. What do you mean – that there is no Nagsena? Then who has come?’

And Nagsena said, ’Yes, coming is there, going is there, but there is no Nagsena. The dance is there but there is no dancer... the running is there but there is no runner.’

The king said, ’I cannot understand these puzzles – I am a practical man. Please be practical, don’t talk in abstract things! How can there be running without a runner and how can there be dance without a dancer?’

So Nagsena said, ’Look at your chariot. If we take the horses away, are the horses the chariot?’

The king said, ’No – horses are horses; they are not the chariot.’

And Nagsena said, ’If we take the wheels of the chariot away, are the wheels the chariot?’.

And the king said, ’No, the wheels are wheels; they are not the chariot!’

In this way Nagsena went on. He said, ’If we take this away and that away and that away, and nothing is the chariot, the whole chariot disappears!’ Then he said, ’Now where is the chariot? –

because whatsoever we have taken away you said was not the chariot: the horses are not, the wheels are not, the axles are not.... So according to you, sir, the chariot must be left behind! Where is the chariot now?’

It was just a combination: there was no self, there was no ego, there was no substance. Things were joined together, they have been taken apart. There was no soul in it!

This is the buddhist’s idea of’anatta’, no-self. It is one of the greatest insights in existence. The ego is not the thought, mm? – the thought is the wheel, the thought is the horse. Neither is it the feeling.

The idea that everything is being centred on something, everything is being held by something...

that something is the ego – and that is simply a notion. The ego exists not!

To look into it is a great liberation, mm? – then you simply relax: whatsoever is happening is happening. You are not; you are just a combination. The combination will fall one day and nothing will be left behind... there is nothing behind!

This insight is what buddha means by ’shunya’ – to look into zero. The ego is a false notion, and it creates worry because you think ’How am I going to be tomorrow?’ And then you worry: ’Yesterday was not as good as it should have been. I suffered so much. Tomorrow I am not going to suffer, I am going to enjoy’... and this and that, and a thousand things arise around this idea of the ego. And it is not! It is simply emptiness!

As you proceed deeper into meditation you will come more and more to see it – that there is just a pure nothingness inside, just pure sky. In that pure sky is freedom, liberation. Not that you become liberated; you disappear, hence liberation!

Christianity says you become liberated! Buddhism says where are you? – hence liberation. The difference is tremendous! The christian standpoint is a very childish standpoint: you still remain but you become liberated. Buddha says you are the prison: when you disappear there is liberation. Not that you are liberated; your disappearance is liberation. One is freed of oneself. Not that one is free; one is freed from oneself.

Just go on looking at thoughts, looking at feelings as things arise, with no idea of I.

It is almost like this: when there is lightning we say ’It is lightning’. What do you mean? Is there something else also, the ’it’? There is only lightning; there is nothing behind it. It is not that ’it’ is lightning. When we say ’It rains’, what do we mean? Is there something that is raining? There is nothing; it is all rain! There is nothing behind it.

Buddha says: There are only processes, and there is no substance behind anything. And modern physics agrees absolutely with Buddha: matter is not! It is only energy running, running fast! There is no substance in the world; It is exactly like modern physics: modern physics says there is no matter and buddha says there is no self. It is all energy formation, processes of course, verbs of course, but no noun and no pronoun.

It is such a great insight that intellectually it is not possible to understand it. One has to meditate more and more, then one day suddenly it dawns on you. Suddenly one sees – yes, where am I? All the layers have been looked into and just emptiness in the hands... but that emptiness is all!

[A sannyasin asks about her relationship: I just feel like I want my own space... and I’m perfectly happy living separate.]

I can understand, but one thing you have to understand which will be helpful later on, is that people want their own space but when they have it they start feeling sad; what to do with that space? They start inviting somebody into that space.

You start inviting somebody into that space and you feel very good. The person comes into your space and, of course, he starts overlapping your space. You feel very good in the beginning; then by and by he becomes a permanent resident there in that space and you are no more alone. Then you feel interfered with, trespassed on: you start feeling that you are no more as free as you used to be. You start hankering for that space again, and a very imaginary nostalgia arises. Now you want your space back. Then there is fight.

You invited the man, now you start pushing him away. Once you push him away, for a few days you will feel good again, mm? – you have freedom – but once he is really away, then what to do with that freedom? You are left alone with your freedom... to do nothing!

This is the human dilemma: freedom wants love, love wants freedom. When you are in freedom you want to grow into love; when you grow into love the freedom is lost. Then you start asking for freedom, you start destroying the love.

This has to be understood. Once you understand it there arises a subtle understanding, and that understanding helps you to make a certain synthesis between freedom and love. That synthesis has completely broken in the western mind.

The western mind, particularly the modern generation, has completely lost track of that synthesis: how to be with someone and yet be free, and how to be free and yet be with someone. That is-one of the greatest arts. It comes slowly. It is very delicate; it is like a knack. And that has to be learned, otherwise again and again you will be in a turmoil.

Once you are alone it will be good for a few days because you will compare it with that situation where the other was there and you were hampered. You wanted to do this thing and you could not do, you wanted to rest one morning and you could not rest, you wanted not to go anywhere, to sleep the whole day, and you could not sleep.

Now you can sleep, now you can do whatsoever you want. Now your bathroom is free, mm? –

the other’s things are not there. Your room is completely free and he has not thrown his clothes anywhere; now things are clean. But only for a few days and then you start missing the other.

Where is his toothbrush? Where is his towel? you start feeling lonely, alone; you start feeling that somebody should be there. Yes, it is alone but now it is no more warm! Those small things were making it warm. Somebody was there to look after you, somebody was there to be looked after. Now nobody disturbs your sleep; now there is nobody in the morning to give you tea. There is nobody to look after, nobody is ever ill, nothing – but then what to do? Suddenly you are there left alone with nothing to do.

For a few days, in comparison with the past, these days will look good, then by and by when the past is forgotten these days look very very ordinary, lonely. Then you hanker for the other. You invite somebody to bring some coziness and warmth into your room. Again comes the man and naturally warmth, and you feel very good; you are again full and flowing. But again things are there and he is there with his ugly habits: he smokes and things like that. And the whole game starts again!.... So just look into it.

One has to come to an understanding... and it is time now, mm? – you should come to an understanding. These two polarities cannot be lived separately; they have to come to a compromise.

And I don’t see that there is any trouble: one can be free with somebody and one can be with somebody and yet be free. Love and freedom can grow together... of course it needs great art.

A childish person can either be in love or can be free... but you are no more a child – you should by now start becoming a grown-up, mm? So think over it. Good.

CHAPTER 5

I accept you as you are. I love you.

5 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says: I’m going back to pursue my study of astrology and to try to use it as a medium to communicate with people – not for its predictative qualities but just as a psychological tool.... in pointing out blocks and indicating how best we can use our energy.]

Just remember a few things, mm? It will be good for you and good for people; you can go into it as totally as possible.

One thing which is very fundamental has to be remembered, and that is: whenever we are doing anything – astrology, future suggestion, horoscope-readings, palmistry, i ching, tarot – anything that is concerned with the future, it is basically a reading of the unconscious of the person. It has nothing much to do with the future. It has more to do with the past, but because the future is created by the past it is relevant to the future too.

Because people live like mechanical things, the predictation is possible. If you know the past of the person, unless the person is a buddha, you will be able to predict his future because he is going to repeat it. If he has been an angry person in the past he is carrying the tendency to be angry: that tendency will have effects in the future.

Ordinarily, an unconscious being goes on repeating his past again and again: it is a wheel-like phenomenon. He repeats it – he cannot do anything else: he cannot bring any new thing into his life, he cannot have a breakthrough. That’s why all these sciences work. If people are more aware, more alert, they won’t work.

You cannot read the horoscope of a buddha or read his hand because he is so free of the past and he is so empty in the present that there is nothing to read!

It happened in buddha’s life that a great astrologer came across him... and in a very strange situation. The astrologer was one of the most famous, and he had devoted his whole life to astrology.

He was returning to his village from varansi. On the way, when he was passing a river, he was surprised to find on the wet sand the footprints of somebody who should be, according to his astrology, the king of the whole world. What was the king of the whole world doing here in this small village on this small river bank? And why should the king of the world be walking on the bank, barefooted?

In indian astrology they say that on the feet of a ’chakravartan’... chakravartan means the emperor of the whole world, one who rules all the six continents; chakra means wheel, one whose wheel moves all over the world, whose chariot nobody can stop. So, on such a man’s feet there appears a chakra, a wheel. Mm? – you must have seen the wheel on the indian flag. That is the wheel that appears on the feet of the great emperor who rules the whole world; that was on Buddha’s feet.

And it rarely happens: only after millions of years does a person have that symbol, according to astrology. And the wheel was so clear on the wet sand; this astrologer could not believe his eyes!

He followed those footprints – he forgot about going to his own village – and he found Buddha sitting under a tree. He was a beggar, he had a begging bowl by his side and he was sitting in meditation!

The astrologer looked at Buddha’s feet: yes, the wheel was there. He looked at his face: yes, he should be the world emperor; all thirty-two indications were there.

He looked at him from every angle. Buddha fitted the description exactly – as if the books had been written after observing him; there was not a single flaw. What was he doing here, sitting under this tree, this poor tree in this poor village, with not even an attendant to look after him? Why should he be carrying a begging bowl?

The astrologer sat there, waited. When Buddha opened his eyes he said, ’Sir, I am puzzled. You have destroyed my whole life’s effort! My science must be wrong, utterly wrong; I have wasted my life! I am carrying these ancient scriptures with me. If you say that they are wrong I will throw them in this river and get rid of them... the sooner the better! What is the point of them? – because you have all the indications of a chakravartan, of a great emperor. What are you doing here? You go against my whole science!’

Buddha laughed and he said, ’Yes, there were two possibilities: either I would have become a chakravartan or a buddha... and this is far better! But remember that your books are applicable only to a man who is not awakened. If I had been asleep, I would have been an emperor. I am no more asleep. I have become fully enlightened. About me your scriptures are meaningless, but there is no need to throw them because there is almost no possibility of you coming across a buddha again.

About others your predictions will be right. You can go and you can practise.’

All these sciences about the future are basically concerned with the past, and because people live through the past and the past goes on being repeated in the future, your yesterdays go on becoming your tomorrows. And all your yesterdays are contained in your unconscious. If you fall in tune with a person, if you are really en rapport, any astrology, eastern, western, will do, because they are just devices.

The basic phenomenon is to fall in tune with the energy of the person, and to fall in tune so deeply that his unconscious, her unconscious, starts revealing itself to you. His or her unconscious starts stirring your unconscious and in your unconscious, things start arising – visualisations. Those visualisations will be meaningful, you can be of great help, but remember you are not predicting the future!

Make it clear to people that you are simply showing the tendencies, the possibilities; these are not certainties. Because what happens sometimes – and that is the thing that I would like you to remember – is that if you say that something is going to happen, you help it to happen, because then the man becomes certain. Then rather than helping him to become aware and get rid of his past, you help his past to be repeated more smoothly.

If you say to a person, ’You are going to commit a murder’... and you are not saying anything wrong; you are simply looking into his tendencies and this visualisation – that he is going to murder – comes to you. But this has not happened yet and there is a slight possibility that he can get out of it. If he meditates, if he becomes aware, he can get out of it.

But if you say, ’You are going to commit a murder and it is certain’ – that’s what astrologers and horoscope readers and tarot card readers go on doing – you give a suggestion to him. If the murder was ninety-nine percent possible, now it is one hundred percent possible because now the person accepts the idea. It becomes an auto-suggestion: now he repeats it again and again; now he knows that he is going to do it.

And if he goes to some other – -and every possibility is there that he will, because nobody believes in one person: he will go to some gypsy reader, he will go to some tarot reader – they will all say the same thing.

Now they have different methods, but all methods are devices to fall in tune with his unconscious.

They will all read the same thing, and each time it is repeated that you are going to commit a murder it becomes more and more certain. Because maybe one person was wrong but how can seven persons be wrong? Maybe one person was just saying things to befool you, but how can seven persons say it?

They are such different people, they don’t know each other, and their sciences are different; they don’t understand each other’s science. Somebody is looking at a tarot card, somebody is looking into the i ching; somebody is looking into a horoscope according to the ancient sanskrit sources, somebody is looking into something else. Somebody is a crystal-gazer and somebody does nothing

– just closes his eyes, feels your pulse or looks at your shadow, measures it and decides accordingly.

Now there are a thousand and one methods.... If this man goes to many people and they all say the same thing, they are hammering the idea, he is going to commit murder. And he will have this excuse – what could he do? it was predicted, it was predestined. Now all these people have become a part of the murder. If I were the judge, all these seven people would be as responsible for the murder as this man, even more responsible than this man.

So each person who is working in any way with people’s futures should be absolutely aware that when they are predicting something which can go wrong, they should make the person alert that this is not a must, this is only a tendency; this can be avoided, this should be avoided! In fact, this is the whole point of making you aware that you have a murderous instinct. Now don’t remain unalert, otherwise you will commit murder! Become aware; this can be avoided.

And if you see that there is something good that is going to happen, insist that this is going to happen. Drop the negative: make him alert so he can get out of the negative. Help the positive: insist that this is possible. He should make it certain, should work for it; he may miss it if he doesn’t.

So this is the thing: you have to work with the negative so that it doesn’t happen, and you have to work with the positive so that it happens. And make it absolutely clear that nothing is absolutely certain: all are just possibilities, probabilities. If you don’t do anything they will happen. If you go on living in an unconscious way, the way you have been living up to now, they are going to happen.

So if you can use this for making people more alert and meditative, more responsible for their lives, more clear that this is their past – the future has not happened and the past will try in every way to make the future almost like the past; now they have to escape from the clutches of the past – you can be of great help, you can be a blessing to people.

And you have the energy – start working! Get into it as deeply as possible.

[To a sannyasin leaving for the West, Osho suggests he start a centre in his own home. People are thirsty, thirstier than ever, Osho is saying; man has never been in so much suffering and yet so affluent. Both these things make it possible for modern man to take a quantum leap into the unknown. Osho gives him a box and a special meditation to be done with it.... ]

Whenever you need me, just hold it in your hand. Don’t put your hands on it very tightly – just loosely so the box is inside there and a space is around it.

Then close your eyes and just feel yourself rooted in the earth like a tree, mm? – your roots are in the earth. Feel very grounded, and then start feeling that your branches are in the sky; a great wind is blowing and the tree is swaying.

Start swaying. Forget that you are man: simply remember that you are roots and branches and a great tree. Keep this in your hand and go on swaying.

It will give you tremendous energy... and you will feel me there immediately. And start this small centre, so help people.... And when you help people, you are helped.

[A sannyasin says: I used to relate to you as an authority who was going to tell me what to do, and that’s still there somewhat. But when I relate to you in that way, there’s a big no in me. I don’t want that but nothing has really come to replace it.]

That happens: if you look to me as a great authority, one day or other you will rebel against me and the no will come. Don’t look to me as a great authority – I am not!

The very word ’authority’ is not right for me; I am not authoritative at all! I am not giving you any commandments, I am not saying to you to do this and not do that; if you do this you will be praised, rewarded and if you do that you will be punished and thrown into hell. I’m not saying that. I’m not saying that if you do this you will be virtuous and if you don’t do that you will be a sinner. I’m not condemning, I’m not judging you at all. How can I be authoritative?

I accept you as you are; my acceptance is utterly total. I love you. I am not an authority. If I suggest something it is out of love, not out of my authoritativeness.

And it is up to you to accept that suggestion or not. If you accept, good if you don’t accept it is as good as the other. If you don’t accept my suggestion I am not angry. It is your choice, it is your freedom to accept it or not to accept it.

An authoritative person is one who if he says something and you don’t do it, you go against him, he is angry; he will punish you.

In the old testament the jewish god said ’I am a very angry god and if you don’t follow me I am going to crush you!’ That angry god gives ten commandments to the jews, and says ’I am not only angry, I am very jealous! If you worship other gods, then I will be very bad to you. You will have to suffer much: I will throw you into eternal hell!’ Now this is authoritativeness.

The eastern world is totally different. A buddha says ’Be a light unto yourself. The buddha says, ’At the most I am a friend. I can indicate the way; I cannot force it on you. If you choose, you choose out of your freedom, and when you choose the responsibility is yours.’ That has to be remembered!

With an authoritative person there is one good thing: you are not responsible, he is responsible.

That’s why people like authoritative persons – because you can throw all responsibility you have just to follow the orders. If he says go this way, you go that way; if something goes wrong, he is responsible.

That’s why people want authorities – somebody to tell them that this is to be done, this is not to be done. They want leaders. They want leaders like Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin or Mao Tse Tung, who are very arrogantly authoritative, who think that they are infallible. Mm? that is one of the concepts of christian popes – that they are infallible.

But people want these people. Why? because they can throw their responsibility; they can become just slaves. Then there is no problem for them, there is no anxiety; the leaders will look after everything.

People don’t want to be free, they want to be slaves. Whatsoever they say, deep down they want to be slaves, so they are searching for authorities. But when you fall into the hands of an authority, this dichotomy will arise.

One part of you wants me to be authoritative so that you can throw the responsibility. Another part of you, your real part, your authentic part, wants to be free, so it says no! So this conflict will be there... but I am with your ’no’, because that is more beautiful.

So listen to me but there is no necessity to follow me. And when you are not forced to follow you can listen better because then there is no problem; you are just listening. If the thing appeals to you, good, but when it appeals to you, you will be following your own mind – because it appealed to you.

You will not be following me and the responsibility will be yours.

My whole effort here is to make you as responsible as possible. I don’t want to make you cripples, I don’t want you to become dependent on me. How can I want that? I love you! I love you so much I would like you to be as independent as possible, pure independence, because then only is a person beautiful; then he has a soul!

So just because of your idea of authoritativeness the ’no’ is coming. Drop that idea and the no will disappear. Do you understand what I am saying? Drop that idea. I am not an authority at all! Once you drop that idea then from where will the no come? There is no possibility for the no then; I am just a friend.

It is for you to listen or not to listen; it is for you to do accordingly or not. But whether you do or not, if you listen to me lovingly your understanding will go on growing... and that’s the real point. And you will be acting out of your understanding. How can you act otherwise?

That’s why I go on speaking: morning and evening I go on speaking. My whole effort is to make your mind more clear, more understanding, so that you can act on your own.

Nothing to be worried about.... But I am with your no – remember that!

[The sannyasin adds that he lets someone be in control of him and then feels good when he breaks away – then he does not know what to do with his freedom.]

Yes, that’s how it is.

Just see it – that this has become your pattern and this has to be broken. You will have to remain in a vacuum for a few days, only then will it be broken, otherwise not.

This is a trap: you do this, you feel good. Mm? – somebody is your authority and you are following and everything is going perfectly well. Then the problem arises and your inner spirit starts rebelling.

Then too it is good because you feel energy, power, in that no also. But that power can be felt only when there is an authority so you are in a double-bind.

Without the authority you cannot say no. If you drop the authority, no disappears. Then again you are at a loss, then there is no more energy. Again you will start seeking authority: when the authority comes, the no comes. You have to see this vicious circle: the authority brings the no, the no brings the authority.

Seeing it you will understand that you have become too much dependent on your parents in your past and that pattern goes on repeating itself. You have not yet been able to be free of them; you have not killed your parents yet.

Just a few days ago in these talks (the morning discourses, currently in hindi) I was talking about Buddha’s sutra. Buddha says to his disciples ’Do you see that sannyasin?’ One sannyasin was going far away for some work, and Buddha says ’Do you see this fortunate man? He has killed his father and mother and has become perfectly happy since then.’

Of course the disciples are disturbed and puzzled about what he is saying – ’He has killed his father and mother and since then he has become very happy.’

So they ask, ’What are you saying, sir? This is the greatest crime in the world – to kill one’s father and mother! How can he become happy by killing his father and mother?’

And then Buddha explains.... It is not the outside father, not the outside mother, but the impression inside; he has completely destroyed the parental hold inside.

That’s what Jesus means when he says, ’Unless you hate your father and mother you will not be following me.’

Christians have never been able to explain that. They always feel a little embarrassed whenever the question is raised as to why Jesus said it. A man like Jesus who talks about love and compassion saying ’Unless you hate your father and mother’?

My feeling is that he is repeating the same Buddha sutra. He has been here, he has lived in a buddhist monastery, and he has diluted it. Buddha says ’He has killed his father and mother’, and Jesus has diluted it; he has made it softer. He says ’Unless you hate’... but he is saying the same thing.

And my whole approach is that unless you are free of your father and mother they will go on creating problems for you. And they are not wrong; it is simply you, it is a question of you.

It was needed once – it was needed that your father should be authoritative, that your mother should be authoritative – otherwise you would not have grown at all. Mm? – you were simply so unaware of the world and its problems. They had to prepare you.

The child cannot understand reasoning and cannot understand arguments and cannot go deep into analysis and causes and things like that. He has to simply be told ’Do this!’. You cannot philosophise, you cannot sermonise, and you cannot go into the deep causes of it; the child will not understand.

You have to be very clear.

Now psychologists say that because of this, women have become very very authoritative – because they have to deal with children. The father goes to the office or to the factory or somewhere else for the whole day; the mother has to be with the children. She has to become an authority because the children are continuously nagging her. Now, if she goes on explaining she won’t be able to do anything... and explanations won’t help either. She says ’Keep quiet! Stop! Don’t ask nonsense questions. This is so, and it is so because I say so!’

But by and by the woman learns this idea and then with the husband also she is the same: she has become authoritative. She forgets then that with the husband she has not to be authoritative, but with the husband also she is authoritative. She says ’I am saying this, so this is so. We have to go to this movie and not to any other place. We have to do this.’

Psychologists have observed that before marriage women’s voices are not so solid, not so certain; there is a certain hesitation. After marriage, and particularly after children are born, their voices become very very solid and very authoritative.

But they have to be authoritative, and because they do it unconsciously they help and harm the child.

They help for the time-being, but later on that authoritative voice goes on ringing in the head, and you will always be searching for a father or mother figure – somebody who will take responsibility for you. You will remain a baby, you will not grow. Growth will look like pain... and why grow when you can find a father? But constantly you will feel that you are childish, so there is an urge to grow; how can you drop that urge to grow? – so a conflict continues.

Try to understand it; just look into it and remain in a vacuum. This time drop the idea that I am your authority, and see that as you drop the idea the’no’ starts disappearing. Because it cannot exist without the positive – it is the shadow of the positive – it disappears. Then remain in a vacuum.

... Remain with yourself. Even if you do something wrong, nothing is wrong, even that is good – but do it on your own. For a few days, for two, three months, simply be on your own. Listen to your heart and go accordingly. Okay, if you commit a few mistakes nothing to be worried about. One has to commit many mistakes to learn; in fact one learns only by committing mistakes. Never commit the same mistake twice, that’s right, but commit new mistakes every day, find out new things to do, and explore new ideas new dimensions. And go on committing mistakes; nothing is wrong in it.

For two, three months, remain in vacuum with yourself, and then the possibility will arise that you can look at me as a friend and not as an authoritative figure. Then I will be of greater help to you because I will not be your enemy, I will not keep you in your childhood: I will be an opening towards your maturity. And that’s the whole function of a master: to help you to be mature. But out of one hundred so-called masters, ninety-nine are simply giving you substitutes for your father.

[It is not just coincidence that ’pope’ means father, that ’bapu’ (the name Mahatma Gandhi is known as) means father, that christian priests and god too, are known as father, Osho continues: it is all a projection of the same idea.... ]

Drop that idea! Let god be your friend... and then there is freedom, and with that freedom is growth.

[A sannyasin asks about her meditation: Lots of times when I’m meditating, I get scientific information more advanced than what we have here.... I see things like ufo’s and new sources of power, and many things like this that come through all the time. I’d like to turn this into useful information that we could use here on earth.]

The first thing: meditation has nothing to do with any information, and that is all just your imagination.

I received your letter but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to hurt you – and you had just come.

That is just imagination; those advanced masters that are guiding you from the planets are just imagination. If you want to go on playing with imagination, perfectly good. It is your own mind.

Meditation has nothing to do with these things. You can enjoy them – these are ego-trips and very cunning trips – nobody can prevent you, nobody can prove anything against them. You can go on believing in them but finally they lead to madness, nowhere else. These things are pathological, neurotic; I am absolutely against them.

You can believe anything that you want to believe: you can believe in advanced masters guiding you and informing you. And the ego feels very good that they have chosen mandira as a specific channel, a special vehicle on the earth; so you become very special. Your own mind goes on spinning and weaving things and stories. The mind is a great dreamer, it can dream about anything, and down the ages it has been dreaming. The unconscious is a great reservoir: once you are in the mood to receive, then the unconscious starts releasing dreams – but they are not meditations!

Meditation is a state of mind where there is no thought, no vision, no experience, no feeling.

Meditation is a state of mind where no content, no object exists. You don’t hear any information, you don’t receive any information. Meditation is an absolute silence. Stars are not speaking. The whole world has fallen into silence, the whole world has stopped. In that stopping is meditation.

But because of your ideas you think that the meditations here are not that much advanced. Now this is just an ego-trip. If you want to enjoy it, you are free to, but I am not a part in it at all.

I was afraid from the very beginning when you came, mm? I could see that that is a possible danger for you but I was waiting for the right moment, then I would tell you. It is dangerous.

There is a very famous sufi anecdote.... A man in Bagdad declared that he was the new prophet and that god had sent him to transform the whole world. Mohammedans were certainly very angry.

They couldn’t believe that somebody had come more up-to-date than Mohammed.

And he said ’Of course I am far more advanced. I am coming after one thousand years and god has improved much upon the last version; I bring a far more advanced gospel to the world!’

So he was caught, thrown into prison, and the caliph who threw him into the prison went to see him after seven days to see what was happening. He had been beaten very much. He was tied to a pillar and kept hungry for seven days; he had not been allowed to sleep either.

He was tortured tremendously and the caliph said, ’What do you say now?’ He said, ’What do I say?

In fact when god was sending me to the world, he said ”Beware! they will torture you; they always torture my prophets!” So this simply proves that I am the prophet!’

And when he was saying this, another man who was tied to another pillar, started laughing very uproariously.

The caliph looked and he said, ’Why are you laughing?’

He said, ’This man is just mad – I never sent him!’ (laughter) He was caught a few days before; he had declared himself to be god. He said ’This man is just a fraud! I never sent him. In fact since mohammed I have never appointed anybody as my prophet.’

Now, you can believe these things and once you believe.... Now look at this man who says ’Your torture has proved it!’

These people have always existed – and you have a tendency.... You can enjoy it and you can find fools who will enjoy it and listen to you. They will think that you are receiving great information from planets and from great masters and this and that.

The whole theosophical movement depended on such sheer nonsense. Madame Blavatsky used to receive written letters from the masters... and later on the house was searched and it was found that in the ceiling they had made a special place. Letters were dropped from the upper room, they would come from the ceiling and suddenly....

They were from the master, Master KH. Kautami was the name of the master, the highest master, the master of the masters, who lived somewhere on some planet; he was sending those letters.

Thousands of letters were received and every kind of information was in them – every kind of information, mm? – from the very mundane to the suprememost: whether you should eat meat or not...

And whatsoever Blavatsky wanted, she manipulated it through those letters. If she wanted you to do certain things, the letter would come next day ’[You] should do this’. Now KH orders; you have to do it!

These things have always existed in the world. Don’t get into them – get out, otherwise you can go almost mad. And once you start listening to them.... They are very very sweet, one can enjoy them infinitely, and they are very ego-strengthening. Mm? – god is speaking to you!...

One man came to me in Bombay. He brought a very big suitcase with him; he received messages from god every day. He said, ’Nobody listens to me and people think I am mad. My wife takes me to the psychiatrist. I heard about you and I thought you are the right person; you will understand. Now look!’

He opened his suitcase. There were thousands of pieces of paper. I looked at them – all kinds of nonsense – and he said they were ’special information’. Two plus two is four – that is special information that has come to him. And anything, whatsoever comes to his mind, he writes, and he thinks it is special information.

Forget all this! It is time to get out of it otherwise you will be wasting your life.

And I was worried because you came with dharma, and dharma also has this kind of nonsense in his mind. He was doing this nonsense here with people before. And there are always gullible people: if you talk to them about these things they will be impressed; they are always there. The world is so full of fools that it is the easiest thing in this world to become a guru, very easy! Here there are so many sannyasins. Anybody can start playing things and directing people, and they become impressed.

You have a tendency. This tendency has to be completely cut; only then will you be able to meditate.

And don’t think these things that you are taught here are not advanced! In fact meditation is neither advanced nor not advanced. Meditation has only one taste. It has no categories, it has no divisions, no steps; it is a jump. A jump into no-mind is what I call meditation.

And these things are just a help: dancing, singing are just to help. Of course they look mundane

– dancing, singing. One thinks, ’How can these be very far advanced meditations?’ They are just devices so that you can throw your body and mind into some act in a total way; then you stop and silence becomes more possible.

The real meditation starts only when the activity has stopped.

For example in the morning

meditation, breathing is not meditation, just a preparation. Catharting is not meditation; it is again another preparation. The mantra’hoo’ is not meditation. It is again a deeper preparation for it.

Meditation starts when you stop and you fall silent and become frozen. In those few seconds there is a possibility that you may have a little glimpse, a little breeze of meditation. But once it starts coming then you can drop these methods; they are not a must. Once you have known that this space exists, once you have gone into it many times and come back and you have become acquainted with the path that leads to it, then there is no point. You throw the guide, you throw the guidebook, you throw all maps! You know the path: you close your eyes and you slip into it, and whenever you want you can slip into it; then nothing is essential.

But in the beginning when you don’t know this, the map and the guide, music and dance and everything, is helpful; these are just arbitrary helps.

So don’t think that these are meditations. The map is not the real country, and neither are these real meditations. The map is just an indication. Once you have known the path then you can travel it all alone. Then there is no need for anybody and then there is no need to do anything... because meditation is not an act. You cannot do it... it is nothing to do! How can you do it? It is like love: you can be in love – how can you do love?

But my suggestion is, drop those things; they will not be helpful, mm? They can drive you crazy –

and crazy in a very wrong sense, crazy in a pathological sense.

Completely cut them off. Listen to me. And don’t listen to people like that; those kind of people are always there.

CHAPTER 6

Love utterly, totally... Love madly.

6 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A newly arrived sannyasin says she did encounter group in Germany and felt she was on the point of exploding but kept control, she held back from the point of total let-go. Osho checks her energy and says that she is controlling a lot, but reassures her that something can be done; it is not a problem.... ]

You have lived a very controlled life, knowingly, unknowingly. You have tried to be wise, you have always tried to be on the safer side. You have never taken any risk; maybe sannyas was your first risk.

And without risk. Life happens not. Without risk there is only death and nothing else. Only with risk one is born: the greater the risk, the greater will be the birth. The greater the risk, the greater is the possibility to live.

But down the ages we have been taught to live a controlled life, a very disciplined life – always manipulating from the head... never allowing the body to have its say, never trusting the body, never trusting the instinctive. And if you don’t trust the instinctive, you cannot trust the intuitive either, because they are both alike; this has to be understood.

The reason is just in the middle: below it is instinct, above is intuition. If you don’t allow the instinctive, which is below it – you have to lose control in the instinctive also – then you cannot allow the intuitive either. It is above, but in the same way you have to lose control.

Samadhi and sex are similar in that way: in both you have to lose control. Sex is lower than reason, samadhi is higher than reason, but in both directions your reason has to be dropped.

Reason is as destructive to sex as it is to samadhi. It does not allow your body, it does not allow your soul. The mind is just in between: below it, body, above it is soul, and the mind is just between the two. It is a holy ghost.

And you have lived too much in the mind so your body feels static – non-dynamic, not moving, not dancing – like a statue. That has to be changed; you have to bring more dance to your body. It is your body. You have to bring more movement, more dynamism, otherwise the body will become more and more lethargic, sleepy. And our contact with life is through the body. With nature we are joined through the body: with the trees and with the mountains and with the ocean and with the stars.

If your body remains lethargic, unmoving, then you are no more in contact with the stars, you are no more in contact even with the earth, you are no more in contact with the air. You become separate, you become an island, and you suffer unnecessarily... because joy is being in contact. Joy is with the trees and with the wind and with the rains. Joy is with other bodies; joy is in love, in song, in dance, in celebration. Joy is in sensitivity, and that you have missed in your past.

And because of this, the other possibility, the higher possibility, remains closed. If you cannot allow even the lower, how will you allow the higher? Now this is one of the basic things that I want to bring to everybody’s notice. In the past the religious people have taught: don’t allow the lower so that the higher can be allowed. They were absolutely wrong... and human history has proved that they were wrong.

If you don’t allow the lower you will not be able to allow the higher because they both come in the same way: they are both irrational and they both need a state of chaos, not a controlled state. They both exist in freedom. Nature and god both exist in freedom, and all control is of the mind.

You have lived a very very controlled life, a life of character. Mm? – you have armour. I can almost see it around your body like a shell – just like a soldier in the past used to wear armour to protect himself. You have been protecting yourself against life. God is nature multiplied a thousandfold, a millionfold.

One learns through the instinct how to be natural and spontaneous. Once you have learned that, the same has to be applied to the higher. And the higher and lower are not higher and lower in any evaluatory sense. I am not condemning the lower; it is not low. I am not saying it is bad; I am simply indicating the position, the physical position – just as feet are lower and head is higher, that’s all. I don’t mean that the head is better, good, moral and that the feet are immoral or bad. It is just in a physical sense-that the head is higher than the feet, that’s all – not high, just higher; the feet are not low, just lower.

So allow the body to have more say, mm? And in these three months that you will be here, take a jump. I will help you. These groups will bring you out of your shell. The armour has to be broken.

Once it is, you will feel so free and so alive... and that’s all sannyas is about.

... Be more loving; that is your prayer. Forget everything else, just be loving. Love utterly, totally...

love madly and the thing that you want to happen will start happening....

[A participant in the tao group. He discovered much fear: fear of anger, fear of women, fear of people bigger than him, fear of risk-taking. Osho says in fact you are afraid of life. You are afraid of women because they are life. Life is through the polar opposite. This is why in the east bramacharya is used as a means to disappear from life. Fear of anger is fear of love. You only get angry when love is there, otherwise you remain indifferent. Reduce all these fears to fear of life and see that it is just a habit you have got into, and destroy this habit by moving into the opposite of it.]

... And start one small meditation which will help you to change your balance – from fear to love.

You can sit in your chair or you can sit in whatsoever posture you feel to be comfortable. This way is perfectly good (his legs are folded under him). Then keep your hands (Osho demonstrates) like this: the right hand has to be underneath the left hand, mm? – because the right hand is joined with the left brain, and fear always comes from the left brain. The left hand is joined with the right brain, and courage comes from the right side.

The left brain is the seat of reason, and reason is a coward. That’s why you will not find a man brave and intellectual together. And whenever you find a brave man you will not find an intellectual. He will be irrational, bound to be so. The right brain is intuitive... so this is just symbolic, and not only symbolic: it puts the energy into a certain posture, into a certain relationship.

So the right hand goes underneath the left hand and both the. thumbs join each other. Then you relax, close your eyes, and let your lower jaw be relaxed just a little – not that you force it... just relaxed so that you start breathing by the mouth. Don’t breathe by the nose, just start breathing by the mouth; it is very relaxing. And when you don’t breathe by the nose the old pattern of the mind does not function any more. This will be a new thing, and in a new breathing system a new habit can be formed more easily.

Secondly, when you don’t breathe by the nose it does not stimulate your brain. It simply does not go to the brain: it goes directly to the chest. Otherwise a constant stimulation and massage goes on. That’s why breathing changes in our nostrils again and again. Breathing through one nostril massages one side of the brain, through another, the other side of the brain. After each forty minutes they change.

So simply sit in this posture, breathing by the mouth. The nose is dual, the mouth is non-dual. There is no change when you breathe through the mouth: if you sit for one hour you will be breathing the same way. There will be no change; you will remain in one state. Breathing through the nose you cannot remain in one state. The state changes automatically; without your knowing it changes.

So this will create a very very silent, non-dual, new state of relaxation, and your energies will start flowing in a new way. Simply sit silently doing nothing for at least forty minutes. If it can be done for one hour that will be a great help. So forty minutes to one hour, mm? – forty to sixty minutes: start with forty minutes then by and by reach sixty. Do this every day for one hour, and then tell me after three weeks how you are feeling.

And meanwhile don’t miss any opportunity; whatsoever opportunity comes, go into it. Always choose life and always choose doing; never withdraw, never escape. Enjoy any opportunity that comes on your way to do something, to be creative... and after three weeks tell me. Good!

CHAPTER 7

Even in your deepest sleep I am there

7 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is leaving says she is afraid she will forget Osho.]

You will not slip back... and you will not forget me; don’t be worried. But the fear comes to everybody.

It is natural. Here you live in a different climate: for twenty-four hours you are thinking of me, remembering me. You are with my people, surrounded by them, mm? – the whole atmosphere has a certain vibe to it.

Naturally the fear comes. Going back to the West, you will be in a foreign land, and the old mind can pull you back. But it does not happen. The fear is natural but it doesn’t happen, because you have not chosen me out of some forced thing. You have not been forced to choose me; you have chosen me on your own accord.

For example, you were a christian but that was not your choice. You can forget christ – you cannot forget me; I’m your choice. When we choose out of love, it abides, because only love is eternal in life; everything else is non-abiding.

Your parents made you a christian or a hindu or a mohammedan. That was not your choice; it was forced on you. In fact you were waiting to rebel against it. It was not so with the people who had directly chosen jesus, mm? – the immediate disciples. It was not so with them: it was their choice.

They had chosen jesus against the whole world; they had sacrificed everything that they had for jesus. They were real christians.

But out of tradition, out of conditioning, out of the family, it is just accidental that you become a christian, somebody becomes a mohammedan. But you have never thought about it; you have never fallen in love with Jesus or Mohammed.

So in fact, all remembrance is superficial. You pray and sometimes you go to the church and sometimes you look in the bible, but it is never enough; it is so-so. It is never intense, it has no soul in it... it is a formality, so you keep on forgetting.

You cannot forget me; I am your choice – nobody has forced you to come to me. In fact, you have chosen me against the whole world. It is a sacrifice to choose me. It is out of your own courage and out of your own adventurous spirit that you have joined hands with me. How can you forget?

It is natural that the mind starts thinking... but it never happens. Mm? – I am sending so many people to the West; it never happens. It can happen only if somebody has chosen me for some other ulterior motives.

For example, perhaps your boyfriend was here with me and you were simply dragged in because the boyfriend insisted, because you wanted to be with him; so you took sannyas. Then it is bound to happen: you will forget, because you never really remembered.

We forget only that which we have not really remembered. Once the remembrance has happened, really, authentically, forgetfulness is not possible. You cannot forget me even in your deepest sleep.

Even then I am there.

If somebody comes for some other reason – somebody is ill, thinks that if he takes sannyas, his illness may go – then there is a possibility, every possibility in fact, that he will forget me; he had never chosen me. You need not remember your doctor, mm? When your illness is okay, you forget your doctor.

These are ulterior motives.

When you choose out of love, you choose without any motive, unmotivated. You simply love me; that’s why you have chosen me. How can you forget it?

Go and try! Try to forget, and you will not succeed!

[A sannyasin with kidney stones had gone to a psychic healer in the philippines. He thought he had been healed until he returned and found the stones were still there.]

I knew it from the very beginning but I didn’t say anything to you because you were so keen on it, and it is better to learn by experience.

Out of one hundred healers, ninety-nine are bogus. Yes, it is not that nobody is a true healer; there are a few healers who are true healers, but it is very rare to find them, almost impossible. And the pretenders can pretend so well. Sometimes they can pretend even better because they are pretenders. They learn the whole trip very well.

But it is good, mm? It was a good experience. You had to pass through it – some karma! Now have a normal operation, mm? And don’t be afraid of it. Because of that fear you went there; it was unnecessary.

Whenever it is a question between science and magic always choose science. It is better to choose science – more reliable. Even if sometimes magic works, it only works rarely.

[Osho says that he should have conventional surgery done now. If there had been only one stone it might have passed out by itself, but seven are too many to leave in so it is better to have them removed. But you enjoyed the trip, says Osho, chuckling. And someone had to go; now nobody else will need to!]

[A sannyasin, leaving for the West, says he is confused.]

You are in confusion... but everybody has to pass through it, so it is not unexpected. Whenever you start changing, each step will be of great confusion.

Confusion simply means that the old is no more true, and the new has not happened yet. If the old were still true there would be no confusion. If the new had happened, then again there would be no confusion. The familiar is no more relevant and the relevant has not yet become familiar. Between this familiar and the unfamiliar, between the known and the unknown, one passes through confusion.

But this confusion has to be accepted, almost welcomed, because this is how one grows, evolves.

Scientists say that when for the first time monkeys got down from the tree and walked on the earth, they must have been tremendously confused because they were familiar, accustomed to walking on fours; now they were trying to walk on two. From being four-legged animals they were trying to become two-legged.

Just imagine what confusion they must not have passed through.... And all the monkeys must have laughed at the ridiculousness of these monkeys who were trying to stand on their two legs. Nobody had ever done that. It was ridiculous, it was sheer nonsense! And whenever there was any possibility of forgetting, these new monkeys would again start walking on fours; they would forget.

Whenever there was some strain or some stress situation, they would forget the new and start moving in the old way. If somebody suddenly attacked them, they would run on four legs, not on two, because in that state of fear they would fall back on the old and the known, on the safer. But by and by they persisted, and by and by man became a two-legged animal. And out of that, all that has happened to humanity has happened.

Just by standing on two legs man became a different kind of animal. His vision became vast: he could see far away to the horizon. His hands became free, and because of his hands’ freedom he could invent tools, instruments... the whole of science. Arms, att, painting, all became possible because two hands became free: they were available to be used now for anything he wanted.

With a monkey or any four-legged animal, all his four legs are involved in walking; nothing is free.

They cannot paint and they cannot play a guitar and they cannot sculpt, and they cannot do anything.

With those two hands freed, the whole humanity came to a totally different kind of existence; a new mind came out of it.

And when man stood on two legs his whole chemistry changed. But it was very very confusing – for thousands of years the confusion remained.

Still, when a child is born, he walks like a monkey in the first stage; he has to learn walking like a man. Just watch a small child walking on two legs, and you will see what difficulties man must have faced.

And the same happens when you start becoming a sannyasin: in a spiritual realm, not in a physical, the same happens. You start working on a state of no-mind. That is a great jump, a great leap.

Man has functioned through the mind. The mind has some capacities, it can do many things, but there are a few things it cannot do. It cannot give you silence, it cannot give you rest. It cannot give you peace, it cannot give you bliss. It cannot give you truth, it cannot give you god. It cannot give you freedom.

So when you start meditating you are again doing something on similar lines – in the inner world Other monkeys are walking on four legs; you start walking on two. This is in the physical body. Other men are thinking with thoughts; you start dropping thoughts so your mind becomes free of thoughts.

When the mind is free of thought it is almost like hands free of work. When the mind is free of thoughts, the mind is free of work, free of occupation. In that freedom many things become possible: the vision becomes clear and absolute, and you can see into the deepest mystery of life.

But before it happens there is bound to be a period of confusion, great confusion, and the old will go on hanging around you. Many times, in stress moments, you will again be caught in the old –

because that is safer. You know it, you know how it works; you are efficient with it, you are skilful with it.

So many times when you are too confused you will start catching hold of the old; but remember not to catch hold of it again and again: learn the new! It is hard, certainly arduous, but go with the new, and by and by the new will become familiar. Confusion will go.

Now the confusion can go in two ways: either you settle with the old again – but you will not grow so what is the point of that non-confused state if you don’t grow? – or you become more and more familiar with the new. Then you will not be confused but you will grow.

And this step has to be taken many times in life. Whenever you start becoming settled, take a jump again, become confused again. Live in the chaos again and again till nothing is lost, till you disappear completely into the chaos. That’s what Buddha calls nirvana.

So go, mm? Don’t be worried – I am with you. Continue to meditate, and come whenever you can come.... Good.

CHAPTER 8

You are entering a chaos

9 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Savya means all, sachi means true... and that’s your path too: become as authentic as possible. Let authenticity be your god; don’t allow any falsity to abide in you. The moment you feel something is false drop it immediately, instantly, whatsoever the cost. The moment you feel that you are wearing a mask, throw it away. It is not easy, I am not saying that. It is difficult, it is arduous, but the pay-off is tremendous.

Once you start feeling your authentic face, life takes on a new dimension. Then you are no more in the old rut; you have taken off. You no more walk on the same ground; the whole sky is available to you. All becomes possible through authenticity, through being truthful, through being true.

Man is lost to god and god is lost to man because of inauthenticity. A great china wall surrounds you and all, of false masks, of pretenses, of hypocrisies; that’s how we have been brought up. It is an unfortunate fact but it is how humanity has lived up to now. It has lived in falsity, it has dealt only in counter-coins, pseudo coins, counterfeits, for so long that if sometimes the real coin comes in your vision you can’t recognise it.

When a Jesus is there, people deny him; when a Socrates is there people want to kill him. They have lived so long with masks that any man with an original face is a danger to them. And by becoming a sannyasin you are entering a great, dangerous path.

From this moment onwards you will be participating in me; that’s what sannyas is all about. It is participating with a man who is no more on the earth. It is participating with someone who is no more visible, who is no more tangible, who is, but is, indefinable. You are entering a chaos, a creative chaos: you will be born out of it.

And I am giving you one of the most beautiful names ’savyasachi’. Let it resound in your being, and whenever somebody calls you ’savyasachi’, remember! Don’t become accustomed to the name, don’t allow it to become a mechanical habit. Let it be a continuous remembrance again and again and again. Let it hit you hard, and become true to the name.

[The new sannyasin says he can be here for three weeks only, but perhaps next time he can stay longer.... ]

Good – you will be staying longer! And even these three weeks will become an intense experience...

it is going to become a great joy. You have really come.

Many people come; very few people really come. And sometimes even those who really come, they miss, because once they have come they think the work is finished. In fact, the work starts... now it starts!

Coming to me is a long journey. Many times you will feel that you have come and again I will make you aware that it is yet to happen; it is always ’yet’. One is arriving and arriving and one never arrives. But that’s the beauty of it – it is an eternal growth – and once you have understood that the goal-oriented mind disappears. Then the journey itself is bliss. Not that you are going somewhere, not that somewhere else is heaven: there is nowhere else, there is no there-then. It is all here and it is all now.

But still one grows – not in the future; one grows in the present, one goes deeper and deeper into the present. The growth is of a depth, not of extension... and there is no end to it because inside we are an infinite abyss. We go on falling and falling and falling and the bottom never arrives. The bottom exists not.

The day we understand that – that there is no goal – there is great freedom. One is liberated: in being liberated from the goal, one is liberated. That’s what I mean by salvation. Now you don’t work for any goal. You work to be celebrating here.

These three weeks are going to be of great joy and great intensity; just cooperate with me. Relax completely for these days you are here and try to be true to your name. Mm? – just move moment to moment and for the first time, try to have a taste of truth. And be truthful, whatsoever it is.

If you are not feeling like smiling, don’t smile; if you feel like crying, cry. When you are really feeling like crying, then that is the thing to do; when you feel like smiling, then that is the thing to do. When hungry, eat; when feeling tired, sleep. Just go naturally. If you don’t want to make love to your woman, don’t apologise. When you want to make love, only then.

By slowly arranging your life truthfully you will suddenly see that things start falling into a new gestalt, into a new pattern, and life becomes poetry. It is poetry! All that is needed is available; it is just not in the right place: things are scattered and life has become a junkyard.

By being truthful you create a centre, a magnetic centre, and on that centre, things start settling.

There are only three magnetic centres available to man. In India we have called them ’satyam’,

’shivam’, ’sundaram’. ’Satyam’ means truth; that’s what I am telling you. ’Shivam’ means good, virtuous. ’Sundaram’ means beauty. Truth, goodness, and beauty – these are the only three centres through which a man can transform his life... and truth will suit you perfectly.

There are people whom truth will not suit, aesthetic people: beauty will suit them more. Their truth is beauty; your beauty is truth. And there are other people also whom truth will not suit, to whom beauty will not appeal – only goodness. They are the people who have created god in the world; their vision has come to the ultimate peak in god. God is the good, the ’summum bonum’; there is no higher good than that.

And these are the three possibilities for every human being to create a centre. Let truth be your centre!

Prem means love and pashya means one who has got eyes – one who has got eyes for love, one who is capable of seeing love, one who is capable of discovering love. And that is one of the greatest blessings – to be able to see love. Because whatsoever you can see, you can become.

If you cannot see it, you cannot become it: becoming starts by seeing. If you can see love, then you will start becoming it, you will become love. If you can see beauty, you will start becoming beautiful. Whatsoever you see, ultimately, you turn into. And you have a possibility for great love...

so recognise that possibility consciously.

Sometimes it happens that we go on stumbling in an unconscious way; then much energy is wasted.

We are not going in one direction: we go one step towards north, another step towards south, not knowing what we are doing. Once you have a clear-cut vision and a sense of direction, things grow fast.

Love is your direction. Be more and more loving, and be unconditionally loving; don’t be a miser in love. The misers are losers, because the more you love, the more you get... but don’t love to get because that is again a miserly mind. Simply love and forget about getting back anything; return or no return. That is not relevant at all.

In the old testament they say to do unto others what you would like them to do to you. That is not very loving; it is very economical, it is miserly. Mm? – do unto others what you would like them to do to you. It is a bargain, it is conditional, it is business-like... but jews have always been business-like: even about the highest things they will bring in business. On the surface the dictum looks very very profound... it is not!

Love for no return, love with no idea of any return. Not that nothing is returned, it returns a thousandfold, but that should not be in your mind. Simply give, enjoy giving. That’s the basic, the very essential, very core of love: enjoy giving!

People enjoy getting. Even if they give, they only give to get: their mind is focused on giving more and they feel very wise if they can give less and get more. They are cheats.

A lover is one who gives, who simply gives, who goes on giving, who keeps no account, who never remembers what he has done. Then love is returned a thousandfold. It is not a result, it is a natural consequence; it happens on its own. If you ask, you hinder it.

I was reading a story.... A very rich woman went to a doctor: she had appendicitis and the appendix was to be removed. The doctor knew that she was the richest woman of the country, and when the operation was done, the woman completely cured, she came to thank him. She brought a purse, a purse made of very rare pearls, and she presented it to the doctor; but the doctor said ’What about my fees?’ The woman asked ’What are your fees? How much are your fees?’

He said ’Five hundred rupees’.

So the woman took back the purse, opened it and gave him five hundred rupees. The purse was carrying almost fifty thousand rupees!

And that’s how it happens in life: we ask for such a small thing while a millionfold was going to come, was going to happen. So never ask; just go on giving and then love becomes prayer.

Let love be your prayer....

Deva praveeta – pregnant with god...

Every being is pregnant with god, and unless you give birth to god, there is no bliss possible. Unless you become god, there is no contentment. And god is not something outside you; it is your very inside, mm? That’s the meaning when I say you are pregnant.

Everybody is pregnant and has been pregnant since the very beginning. We are carrying the load of pregnancy, but we are afraid to give birth because the birth is painful.

By becoming a sannyasin you are accepting me as your midwife. Now you can relax, you can trust; now you can allow the child to be born. And that child is you... that child is your ultimate growth!

That child is your peak consciousness. And unless we give birth to ourselves, we remain unfulfilled.

There are two kinds of people: once-born and twice-born. Once-born remain miserable, the twice-born become blissful.

So be consciously ready for it. Much has to be done as a preparation, but the child is there, the seed is there. Just a little readiness is needed, a little courage, a little adventurousness and a little acceptance of the pain that is bound to be there. But that pain turns into such bliss. That’s why I am giving you that name.

[A sannyasin, returning to the West, says she will be working on a farm.]

There you can grow your meditation also... more easily than anywhere else. With growing things, one grows more easily. If you meditate with trees you will grow faster. And not only that: if you meditate by the side of trees, the trees grow faster. Your growth vibrates them, their growth vibrates you.

Where things are moving fast – a river, a farm, trees – where everything is moving and nothing is static, you are pulsated from every direction. A vortex of energy is created around you and you are taken by it, possessed by it.

To meditate in a concrete house is different. Nothing is growing there; everything is dead, concrete.

Nothing vibrates, nothing cooperates. There is no sensitivity around you; there is no feedback.

When you meditate by the side of a tree, the tree is happy. Now these are scientific facts – no more just poetry. The tree feels happy: your meditative energy, your alpha waves, make the tree very very joyful. And in return, naturally, the tree starts showering its energy on you.

Be with growing things, be with children, be with trees, be with rivers. Be with growing things and you will grow.

And whenever you can find time, meditate, and whenever you cannot find time, be total in your acts. Then it is meditation – and meditation has to become a twenty-four hour thing, only then will it transform you. A one-hour meditation cannot be of much help. Yes, it is good in the beginning, it is good to start with, but it cannot be of much help, because in the other twenty-three hours you will be destroying it. How can you hope that one hour will be able to win over twenty-three hours of destruction?

It is as if you paint for one hour and destroy it in the other twenty-three. It will never be complete, it will never be completed. Meditation has to become almost natural like breathing. Rather than it being something that you do, it has to become something that you are.

So be very very loving to the plants, loving to the soil, to the earth, loving to the animals that will be there on the farm, loving to the people who will be working there. Just be loving and be totally in whatsoever you are doing, be lost in it, and then slowly, meditation becomes no more an activity. It becomes your natural rhythm; you are in it. Then it spreads all over your life.

Yes, even when you are asleep it will be there; it will be there surrounding you. It will be there in your dreams, it will be there in your dreamless states. It will be like breathing: whether awake or asleep, you go on breathing. And meditation is a higher form of breathing.

Your body lives through breathing, your soul lives through meditation. People who don’t meditate and people who don’t know what meditation is, don’t have any souls – cannot have. They have only bodies; the soul is just a possibility. It can happen but it has not happened.

[A sannyasin says: My heart is bounding in my chest and contracting as if there’s a big weight on it.... Whenever I go deeply into meditation it intensifies.]

Right. No, it is very clear.... And what you are doing is wrong. In fact, you are avoiding it, you are denying it; you don’t want to go into it. You will have to go into it; there is no other way. One goes through it and then beyond it. You cannot avoid it, you cannot by-pass it. You cannot find a-short-cut so that you can avoid it; that is not possible.

Yes, it is fundamental, and the more fundamental a thing, the less is the possibility of avoiding it. If the thing is not very fundamental it can be avoided. When the thing is really fundamental, how can you avoid it? It is there at your deepest core. At the most you can forget it, but it will come again and again and it will come with a vengeance.

That’s why in meditations it is more intense – because you come closer to it. It is not that the meditations are not working; it is because they are working that you come closer to it. That’s why in leela you came closer to it and it became very intense. That’s what is needed: it has to be allowed its full say. It has to be allowed to possess you.

... You are not in it yet; you are just on the periphery. You go on watching it. Watching is not a way to go into it – no. Watching means you are keeping it separate: watching is a subtle way of keeping things separate. Watching can never lead you into it.

You have to drop watching. You have to become it, you have to get identified with it, then you will go into it. And once you are into it, you have lived it, you have suffered it, you have really become sad, and miserable, a totally different kind of watching will arise; you will be coming out of it.

And there are two different things one is where you are just outside the door, another is where you have passed through it. In both ways you will be out of it, but in the first you will be missing; in the second, you have crossed it.

It is the dark night of the soul; that is the word christian mystics have used for centuries. One has to go into this dark. One has to feel completely abandoned by god. One has to feel that there is no happiness, no joy, nothing, only this sadness. This sadness is all, and you are this sadness.

Don’t listen to what I was saying to somebody else just a few minutes before about not being identified with your misery. Don’t listen to that. That was for that particular person: that was for ananda para, not for you. You have to go into it, get identified with it.

Your watching is your undoing. You watch, you remain alert, you keep aloof – and this is not the right moment for that. One day I will tell you to watch, but not now. Right now go into it, let there be a great jump into it – become mad.

Nothing is wrong! If god is sending sadness this moment, then it must be needed: somehow, somewhere, there must exist a need for it. Nothing happens without your need. You may not understand the need but that is not the point; god understands more. Trust and go into it!

I think that if you can go into it totally – yes, it will be a hellish experience – you will come out of it so flowing, so alive, and then it is finished forever. This way it will cling, it will hang on and on and on –

and one day or other it has to be reckoned with.

... A one-month experience of misery and sadness will pay you so much that you cannot imagine it.

If it is possible there... I think it will not be possible there – you will not be able to go through it there

– so come back.

[A sannyasin said that she had trouble relating, and understanding her emotions. She also felt bad about making too much noise in a group.]

No, you really need to make more noise; then it will be connected. You repress because you are afraid. And even [the group leader] made you afraid that you were making too much noise. When you feel that you are making too much noise, you don’t allow it to its total intensity. When the total intensity is not there you will feel that it is separate: it goes up to here and you are there and there is a distance between the noise and you.

If it goes deeper, the distance will be lesser. If it goes completely to the centre the distance will be lost and you will not find the trouble that you are thinking – that your thinking and emotions are separate.

You really need to go into a primal scream. Do primal.... And don’t be afraid, because if you are afraid and you don’t allow it, it will not be connected with you. It is there it is going to come in a big way. It is not a small scream; it is really primal! It is going to shake both you and your therapist!

Nothing to be worried about, the problem is not there. It is just that you have never allowed it in your life. For your whole life you have been a disciplinarian: you have been trying to have a certain pattern of life, a certain character; you have an armour. Mm? – that’s why the group people felt put off.

You have to go totally into it, otherwise it will be as if you are pretending: it will seem that you are doing something; but it is not the real thing. The real thing is not allowed: you won’t allow it, others won’t allow it. The real thing is not allowed and the unreal nobody likes... so that is the trouble.

And your scream is going to be a real scream; it will come from your very guts. You will be surprised at how volcanic the scream can be. But one scream and you will be totally connected, and then there will be no problem.

So book for individual primal, mm? and really go into it. Don’t consider what others say; it has to be gone through. It is your scream, it is your problem. If [the group leader] feels you are making too much noise, that is his problem – not yours. He can worry if he wants to but you need not!

CHAPTER 9

Meditation is a way of living

10 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor, a poet and teacher of creative writing, said he felt very moved by Osho’s books, but now he feels confused. He will stay for the camp.]

Very good! So do the camp, mm? and get into meditations, because the thing that has brought you towards me is a deep desire somewhere for meditation. It may not be very conscious but we are all groping towards something – we don’t know what. We only know that the groping is there, we only know that something is missing. We don’t know what exactly... and how can we know unless we find it?

This is the paradox: we will be able to know what was missing only when we have found it. Before it we cannot even know what is missing; there is no way to know. We have always missed it, something is missing, hence the groping, hence the enquiry.

Whatsoever we are and wherever we are, this is not the space in which we are meant to be; that is the situation. Something is not fitting, we are not falling into an organic gestalt. The joy is missing.

Yes, there are many pleasures and many miseries but the joy is missing.

The pleasures are also superficial, as are the miseries. Yes, one can forget oneself in those pleasures for the time being, and then again one feels empty. And when one looks back those pleasures also seem to be just ways of escaping from something. They help us to relax a little bit but they don’t help us to celebrate existence. They function more or less like intoxicants. They are good to help one forget oneself and one’s miseries and worries but again when one comes back the miseries are there, the worries are there.

And even if one lives a life of a merry-go-round, finally one feels ’What is the point of it all?’ Even if life was good, pleasant, then too there seems to be no profound meaning in it.

That’s what I feel – a search for the profound meaning, something that will make everything luminous, something that will give the touch of divineness to every small act of life so that each moment becomes a fulfillment. And that I call the desire to meditate.

Meditation is not just a method – it is more a new way of living. A method helps, a method prods us, provokes us, challenges us, but finally it culminates in a new style of being. And everybody is in search of that: the religious people and the irreligious people, the theists and the atheists, the educated and the uneducated, the poor and the rich, man and woman; everybody is in search of that.

So it happens not only to you; it happens to many people, particularly to people who live in the world of intellect. When they read they are tremendously thrilled; things seem very clear because their intellectual perception is very clear. As far as intellect is concerned they are efficient people; they can go with the logic.

But when you come really across a person of religion you will be confused, you will be very mixed up... because a religious person, howsoever intellectually he talks, is basically a non-intellectual.

When you look at me you are looking at an irrational man. When you read my books you are reading something rational.

My assertions can be rational but I am not. So whenever an intellectual person comes to me this happens almost always, without exception. Books make him very very clear. With me, he starts feeling confused, mixed up... because I am more than the books! And the other part that is missing in the books is the real part; the part that is creating this confusion is the real part. The books are just invitations to come to this part: to the non-rational, the irrational, the absurd.

God is an absurdity; it is not a logical proposition. No argument can prove it and no argument, of course, can disprove it. All argumentation is futile – only experience is of value... but experience is no argument! In fact experience is the failure of argument.

The intellectual mind wants first to be logically convinced then it will take the second step; but there are things which cannot be logically proved. First you have to go into them and then you become logically convinced – but that is a secondary thing. The experience comes first and the logic comes later, not otherwise.

So when you come to me, I am there, very absurd. If you start feeling love for me and if a trust arises

– which I can see... it can arise! And when it arises in an intellectual person it is of tremendous depth because it arises against your own mind. The pull has to be greater than the mind, only then does it arise: it is moving to the opposite polarity.

You have used your intellect but you have not used your intuition at all, so in an intellectual person there is a great need for balance. Once he starts falling into some trap somewhere, where he can be pulled towards the intuitive, towards the feminine, towards the illogical, then a great revolution is on the way. An intellectual will really start participating with somebody’s being. He goes to deeper depths of irreason than an ordinary, non-rational person can go.

It is almost in the same proportion: if you have gone too much into the intellect, to the same extent you can move in the opposite direction; if you have not gone too much into the intellect, you cannot move to the opposite so deeply. It is like a tree: the higher it goes, the deeper go the roots – in the same proportion. If it is thirty feet high, the roots go down thirty feet. When the tree is only one foot, the roots cannot go down thirty feet: the roots will go, at the most, one foot.

But when you read my books the logic comes first. When you come to me, experience comes first, the person comes first. And I am an illogical person, so I confuse. Be here and I will confuse you more and more! But out of this confusion, something great can be born. In fact, everything that is ever born is born out of confusion, out of chaos, really.

When you are in chaos, there is a possibility of a star. When you are settled, very logically settled and everything looks fine, your syllogism is perfect, nothing is born. The mind is not very creative, it is very repetitive. All creation comes from beyond the mind, and whatsoever is produced by the mind is at the most a composition, not a creation.

Always, whenever something really creative penetrates you, it comes from beyond the mind. It may be a scientific discovery or it may be the birth of a poem, or the birth of a painting or a song or a dance – it doesn’t matter – but it always comes from somewhere that the mind doesn’t know; it comes from out of the blue. It comes through the mind but it doesn’t come from the mind. It passes through the mind, it takes the shape of the mind, but it never comes from the mind itself.

So when you read my books or you are just aware of what I say, it will not be confusing. I try hard even then but it is very difficult to confuse intellectual people just by books! But when they come, then it is going to happen. You are fortunate: it is going to happen!

Be here, and give me a chance!

[Another visitor says: I’ve been searching for something most of my life... I have very low energy.]

In the search it does not matter – low or high energy. It matters only if you are a low energy person and you choose some high energy method: then it will be difficult. In the same way, if you are a high energy person and you choose a low energy method, it will be difficult. If you choose the right method there is no problem at all. There are low energy methods, there are high energy methods, because the whole humanity is divided in two categories – the low and the high. When I say low and high, I don’t mean any evaluation.

The low energy person is a passive person and the high energy person is an active person. The difference is of passivity and activity; the difference basically is that of male and female, yin and yang. But for the passive person there are beautiful methods – as beautiful as those for the active person.

Lao tzu is for you, tao is for you. Mm? – tao is the ancientmost lazy man’s guide to enlightenment!

(Laughter) There is no problem in it. There are certain methods that will suit you and which are only for the low energy person – for a person who cannot go in active search for god, who can sit silently, who can open his heart and wait for god to come to him.

And god comes... because you are not only in search of him; he is also in search of you. The fire is on both the sides. It is not only that you are athirst; he is also athirst. It is not only that you are aflame with desire to know; he also wants... the same desire.

Existence is reciprocal; there is a synchronicity. Whatsoever is happening in us must be happening somewhere in existence also, otherwise it could not exist in us either. If we are thirsty, there must be some water. In fact before the thirst is created, water is created. Before the child is born, the mother’s breasts are getting ready: they are becoming bigger, the milk starts flowing.

This is synchronicity, this is the harmony of existence. If you are searching for something, then something is searching for you. What name you give that something does not matter: you call it god, you call it truth. God is a better word because to think that truth is searching for you looks a little illogical. Truth searching for you? It does not fit rightly. Truth has no personality in it, it is very impersonal. God is a person, truth is a person; then it becomes god.

I don’t see that there is any problem, mm? – you have just to avoid active methods. You have to avoid aggressive methods, you have to avoid aggressive religions; they are not for you. It is not that they are wrong. They are simply not for you; they are for somebody else.

You have to fall in tune with passive methods. Buddhist vipassana will help: just sitting silently, waiting. Mm? and the way you are sitting is just a zen posture.

[The visitor said she had done some TM and zen. At first she liked TM, but then it did not seem enough.]

Right, exactly right. It is a very shallow method: it works only so far. If somebody is really going to do it, within three months he will be finished with it. If you don’t really do it, then you can hang around it for years. If you are really doing it, within three months you will be finished because then it never leads you any further. It is a very very elementary method. It is good because many people need elementary methods; then they start searching for something deeper. In the beginning the deeper may not be of any use. It brings many people to the search, but it itself is not enough; that’s exactly how it is. But it scratches the ground, that’s good.

Do a few meditations here... and when I say ’passive’, I don’t necessarily mean that if you are sitting then the method is passive. Sometimes while you are dancing the method can be passive and sometimes sitting you can be very aggressive. So when I say ’passive’ I mean the attitude – not to hanker for it, allow it to happen. Don’t be greedy for it, don’t go to grab it. Open your heart and wait.

Learn waiting.

So do a few methods here – dancing, singing, sufi dancing – and just float very easily. Don’t make a strain on yourself; that will not help. Just go very very lightly; don’t take it seriously. If you take it seriously it becomes active; if you take it as fun it remains non-active, it remains passive.

Take it as fun rather than thinking that you are doing something great – very religious or something.

Drop all that nonsense! You are just enjoying this dance. It is beautiful to dance, it is beautiful to sing; it is beautiful to be with so many people and to just feel their vibe.

If you can allow it to happen, it will happen.

[The visitor said she had done some groups, and some sufi, but not the whirling.]

No, I don’t feel that it will suit you – it is very drastic; it won’t suit you. It will create nausea and dizziness in you... but you can try. It will create much nausea and dizziness if it doesn’t suit, and a very deep trembling and weakness. If it suits it is great but it very rarely suits. That’s why it never became a very very prevalent method; even in mohammedan countries it never became very prevalent. Only a few mad people have been doing it; it never suits the greater majority.

But try – if it suits, then there is nothing to compare with it. First, you are a low energy person so it won’t suit. You are a passive person, it is a very active method so it won’t suit.

But zen can suit you. And sooner or later the world is going to be divided between zen and sufi.

These are the two competitors in the world; the coming future will be divided like that.

Do the camp and then we will see what can be done!

CHAPTER 10

When the time is right, the fruit falls down

11 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says that although everything is fine he feels he is still missing something, maybe laughter.]

That feeling of missing something continues to the very end; it goes only at the last moment. You are not missing anything really, mm? – you are growing rightly, you ate moving in the right direction.

That laughter will also happen in its own time; nothing to be worried about.

This feeling, that something is missing, is also true because something is missing: the ultimate is missing. Everything is good, everything is joyful, things are as they should be; but the ecstasy, that explosion where you utterly disappear and only god remains?... for that one has to wait. It is coming, it is on the way, it may come any day; it can come any day.

So until and unless it has happened you will have this feeling that something is missing. It is fortunate that you feel this. There are millions of people who don’t feel that they are missing at all... and they don’t have anything! You have many things and they don’t have anything!

They are not enjoying their work, they are not happy with their relationship; they have no music in their life, they have no dance in their life. Somebody is accumulating dead money and thinks he is doing great things. Somebody is just rushing into political power and thinks, ’What else can life give?’... They have nothing and still they don’t feel that something is missing; they are the unfortunate people.

Those who are close to me by and by will feel this; everybody is bound to feel it one day or other.

When things start settling and you are joyous and everything is as it should be, then suddenly, everything fits – but something somewhere is missing.

You don’t know what it is... how can you? Unless it happens you will not be able to even know what was missing. You have never known it before so you cannot recognise what is missing.

If you come in the room and you see that the TV is not there, you know the TV is missing because it was there; you knew it. You see your chair is missing; you know it. You come into the house and your wife is not there; you know your wife is missing because you knew her.

But this is something which you have never known, so you cannot really feel what it is exactly. It will remain vague, it will just be a cloudy feeling, a misty feeling that something is missing – ’xyz’. That xyz is what god is. When we say god is missing, it feels as if we know what is missing. We don’t know; god means ’x’.

It is good that you have started feeling it; it happens only when everything is okay. Then only does one feel that ’x’ that mysterious phenomenon which people down the ages have called god, truth, satori, samadhi, enlightenment, nirvana; these are just names for that something is missing. Yes, it is missing, but you cannot do anything to have it.

You can only go on growing in the harmony in which you are already growing. Become more and more harmonious, and the more harmonious you are, the more you will feel that it is being missed, because you will become more alert that there is nothing else you need – only this something. Then the thirst becomes one-pointed.

Money is not needed, power is not needed, prestige is not needed. The thirst becomes by and by very one-pointed towards that ’something’. And that ’something’ will happen only when the thirst has become so total that you cannot say ’I am thirsty’; you can only say ’I am thirst’. Then you don ’t know who you are: you are just a thirst, a burning thirst.

It will happen, but before that everything else has to settle in a deep harmony. God is the last thing to happen: before it we have to get ready. We have to become the host; we have to prepare a thousand and one things.

When the king is to come one has to prepare a thousand and one things. When we invite the king and we have lived the life of a beggar we have to prepare many things. The house has to be prepared, flowers and incense....

The guest comes at the right moment: whenever you are ready, it is there. It has always been there, just waiting for your readiness. Whenever the time is right the fruit falls down. It will happen....

Just enjoy your work, get into it more and more, and this will remain there by the comer that something is missing. Good – there is nothing to be worried about. It is missing, and you have to go on preparing. Things are going well, subhadra, mm? Laughter is on the way; it will be coming!

[One ashram group leader had written to Osho about an experience during his group. He suddenly saw that everything – body, mind, feelings, experiences, interactions – were all kept going by the mind. It was all just illusory – and he found with this realisation that he could neither speak nor move for what must have been over an hour.]

Your experience was great! If it comes again, allow it... but go on doing your work. In those moments you will feel that it is all nonsense, meaningless – it is! But many other people have to be brought to this same experience, so one has to continue the nonsense. Whenever you feel it coming, enjoy it. And it is very good if you fall silent sometimes. Let the whole group feel your silence, let them be also silent; that will be a device, but don’t stop working.

And the greatest thing to understand is that one has to attain to a higher synthesis. For example, when you are working the silence disappears; when you become very very silent, the work disappears. This is good in the beginning, but finally a moment has to come when you are working and yet you are silent; you are talking and you are silent.

I go on talking and I never utter a single word! You go on working and yet you are passive; you are not working at all. That is the synthesis that has to be attained. Otherwise these spaces can become very escapist. They are so beautiful, why bother to come out of them? Why go on doing the group and helping people? What is the point? But then these people will never reach these spaces... and through helping these people you will attain to greater spaces.

So when it comes for one or two hours it is okay. but then pull yourself together, start working, and remember that the inner silence remains untouched: you work on the outside and inside is absolutely silent.

And that will give you more joy, because then nothing can disturb it. Then even in the marketplace it will be there. Even in the very thick of life, in the turmoil, in the noise, in the day to day world, it will be there. It does not need any special arrangement for it: it becomes very very ordinary... and that is the thing to be remembered. It was a mini-satori, but it has to become very very ordinary.

So don’t become attached to it, don’t hanker for it. When it comes, enjoy it. Yes, give it one hour, two hours – that’s all; not more than two hours. Then start getting into work, move very slowly, protect it and keep it inside; it is there. Go on working and you will have a tremendously new experience –

that inside everything is silent and outside there is much activity.

Then the wheel moves, but at the very centre the axle remains unmoving: that is the centre of the cyclone. The centre is possible without the cyclone very easily, the cyclone is possible without the centre very easily, but when the centre is there with the cyclone, it is something of great importance.

That should be the point to be remembered.

And it will happen any day, so just go on and don’t be worried... ant don’t be frightened of me!

[The group leader asks about his work in the group. Sometimes he feels his tempo becoming slower, but wonders if the group benefits more when he is more active.]

It depends... it depends on the group, and it will be different for different people. The extroverts in the group are benefitted more by your activity, the introverts will be benefitted more by your slow-going energy... and they are both there.

Mm? – that’s why I say that whenever it happens it is good for one or two hours; then pull yourself back again, mm? And there are more extroverts. Introverts are few and far between – they have disappeared from the world; the world is missing them. Because they are missing, the balance is lost.

More and more people are extroverts, particularly people who are in your group. They are western people; they are more extrovert. But even these extroverts, working, meditating, by and by become introverts, and sometimes they too are at a stage where they can turn very easily into introverts.

So it depends – but don’t make it much of a consideration. If sometimes you feel like moving in that space for one or two hours, then give that space to the group as a device. Let them also fall silent, let them move slowly; let them keep pace with you. That will be enriching, that will be an enrichment.

CHAPTER 11

Nature is the temple of god

12 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, giten means consciousness – bliss consciousness. And these two things have to be remembered: on one hand, remember to be more conscious; on the other hand, remember to be more blissful. These are the two wings, and if you can attain to these two wings god is not very far away; the whole sky is available. Then you can fly, you can take off. And they both go together very easily, because whenever you are alert, conscious, you are naturally more blissful.

Only in unalertness does one fall into misery. Misery goes together with unconsciousness; it cannot exist with consciousness. Just as darkness cannot exist with light, in the same way misery cannot exist with consciousness. Consciousness is like a lamp burning bright: it dispels misery and naturally makes it easy to become more blissful. And the other way round is also simple: if you are more blissful you will be more conscious, because when you are blissful that very state keeps you alert, alive. That very state gives you a sharpness of being.

Misery dulls you, deadens you. Misery collects like dust around your mirror and you start reflecting less and less. A moment comes when you are just a layer of dust and there is no reflection left.

So these are the two wings to be grown.

The bird of sannyas lives on these two wings:

bliss/consciousness. That bird of sannyas is cal!ed truth. This is the indian trinity: bliss, truth, consciousness. Truth is just in the middle, bliss is on one side, consciousness is on the other side.

If you become blissfully conscious or consciously blissful, you attain to truth. Truth is the synthesis of these two, the highest peak of these two. One has to start with these two.

One cannot seek truth directly; there is no way to. In the first place, we don’t know what truth is. In the second place, we don’t know where it is. In the third place, even if sometimes we come across it accidentally, we will not be able to recognise it because we have never known it before. Previous knowledge is needed to recognise it.

So even if you come across god you will not be able to recognise him. In fact we come across god many times: even in an ordinary life god goes on making contact with you. He comes in many ways but how to recognise him? We don’t know his face, we don’t know his name, we don’t know how he looks. So one cannot move directly towards truth.

That’s where philosophy goes astray: it looks directly into truth; it tries to find out what truth is...

it cannot. Religion goes indirectly, religion goes in a subtle way. Religion does not try to reach in and grab truth; religion tries to grow wings. Religion forgets about truth, remembers consciousness, blissfulness.

So by and by the more you become soaked with consciousness and bliss, the more clear becomes your vision. You attain to clarity, you attain to the third eye. The third eye simply means that these two eyes of consciousness and bliss meet and mingle and become one.

There comes a moment when a synthesis arises between these two, then they are no more two.

They become integrated in one phenomenon; that is the third eye. And with that, one knows god.

With that, one has always known. With that one has never missed for a single moment. With that one has lived in god....

[A sannyasin is returning to his farm in the West. He loves both being on his farm and doing wood sculpturing, he tells Osho. Osho says it is a blessing to be in contact with nature.... ]

It helps growth, because nature is the temple of god; all other temples are false, man-made. A man-made temple cannot be much of a temple, and because of the man-made temple there has been much violence in the world. Love has not grown out of it. Churches and mosques and temples have created more misery rather than bringing more bliss. The only temple that can help people to grow and to be more loving, is nature. So it is always my feeling that if you are doing something natural – farming, gardening – it’s tremendously beautiful, mm? That’s what a religious man should do.

And when you are close to nature you start feeling life more... because it is pure life! It is life being manifested in millions of forms. It is impossible to miss it! How can one miss it and how can one go on avoiding life? – it is everywhere! But in a man-made city you can forget all about god.

God does not exist in a man-made world. He is excluded, he is not allowed in. In a modern city you can live for months, for years, without thinking of god, without thinking of life. Everything is concrete; everything is mechanical. Even people have become robots; they don’t give any indication of being alive.

It is very good to be on a farm with animals, with trees, with sky, with the sun... and wood-carving is also very good, very meditative.

[A sannyasin, newly arrived from the States, says she’d like to surrender but she keeps on having doubts.

Osho replies that you can’t do anything about surrender.

Will and surrender are a

contradiction in terms; you can only wait for it to happen. If you try to do anything, doubting will continue because your mind will put up a fight.... ]

And a surrender done with all these doubts is impotent, because for surrender to be meaningful it has to be total: a half-hearted surrender is a misnomer. Just as there are no half-circles – a circle means a whole circle – there is no half-surrender; there cannot be. It is something else; it is not a circle. You cannot call it half-circle; it is just an arc.

Surrender, to be meaningful, has to fulfill a few conditions: first, it has to be total. So while doubt persists one has to wait. It has not to be done against doubt: it has to be done only when doubt has disappeared. Then the second thing becomes natural: it happens – you don’t do it. The very doing shows that there is doubt so you have to do it against the doubt, you have to make an effort.

Surrender is a happening. When the time is ripe, suddenly you find it happening! Yes, if you want to prevent it, you can, that’s true, but you cannot do it – remember! You can kill it but you cannot create it.

Man has more capacity for destroying than for creating.

There is a beautiful parable in Buddha’s life.... He came across a murderer; the murderer was one of the most famous in the whole of human history. He had decided to murder one thousand men, and he was such a dangerous man that even kings and armies were afraid of him. He was simply mad, and he was a very very strong man: he was almost a wild animal.

He had taken a vow that he would kill one thousand people and he was going to prepare a garland of their fingers. He had killed nine hundred and ninety-nine people, but by that time everybody became alert and he was at a loss to find the one-thousandth person. Mm? – people started not moving wherever they would hear that he was. Traffic on those roads would stop... the rumour would spread.

Buddha was passing by and people told him ’Don’t go on that road. That madman, Angulimal, is there, and he has been waiting for months to kill one man to complete his vow. He will not see that you are a buddha and he will not see who he is killing; he has no eyes to see. At this moment, even if his mother goes there – even she has stopped meeting him – he will kill her too!’

But Buddha said,’If I had not known I may have gone on some other path, but now that you have told me and I know, I have to go. Otherwise what will that poor man do? He has been waiting for months and nobody is going near him. Just out of compassion his vow has to be fulfilled. I am going!’

His own disciples started disappearing! Five thousand sannyasins had come with him: when he went into the forest, by and by they all disappeared; he was alone. When he came to face this man, Angulimal, he was alone.

Angulimal looked at him. Angulimal was certainly mad, but still he felt compassion for this man, this silent man walking so silently, so peacefully, so innocent like a child. He shouted at Buddha, ’What are you doing? Where are you going? Why are you coming close to me? – I will kill you! I am feeling compassion for you – I’ve never felt this compassion for anybody. Simply go back! I am a dangerous man: if you come close to me, if you take a single step more, I will kill you. Go back! Escape from here!’

But Buddha said, ’Where can I go? Death is everywhere, so wherever I go I am going to be killed.

What is the point of my escaping, angulimal? It is good – you can kill me! Somebody has to become instrumental, so you be the instrument!’

And he goes on coming closer – but his face, his silence, his love.... He is showering his love, and Angulimal becomes a little disturbed. He says, ’Stop! Don’t move any further! I tell you I am a dangerous man! I am a madman! Have you never heard about me? Can’t you see this garland of fingers around my neck? I am waiting for one more man!’

And Buddha said, ’What nonsense are you talking? I stopped moving long ago; I have not moved for years. You are running; I am not moving at all!’

Angulimal laughed; he said, ’I think you must be mad, more mad than me! You are walking towards me and you say you have stopped; I am sitting here and you say that I am running!’

And Buddha said, ’Yes, because my mind has stopped. I am not going anywhere; I am no more after becoming. Where to go? What to attain? I’m not rushing and running! I’m simply herenow! You are sitting visibly but invisibly there are a thousand and one desires. You are running in all directions, angulimal! I am still unmoving, you are moving!’

This way, a dialogue arises between these two persons, and Buddha comes closer. The closer he comes, the more difficult it becomes for Angulimal. It is a great challenge.

Then he forgets about killing Buddha. Buddha says, ’Have you forgotten that you have to kill me?

Don’t waste time in talking, because many people, my followers, are coming; it will become more difficult for you. Do it!’

’But just before you do I would like to ask one thing: why do you do it? What do you want to prove?’

Angulimal said, ’I want to prove that I am the strongest man in this country – not only of this time, of all times. I want to leave my name in history as the greatest murderer!’

Buddha laughed and he said, ’Good! Before you kill me, will you do one small thing for me, a dying man – my last wish?’

Angulimal said, ’Of course, what is it?’

Buddha said, ’Cut off a branch of this tree and give it to me.’

Angulimal cut the tree with his sword, gave the branch to Buddha, and Buddha said, ’Now, join it back on the tree.’

Angulimal said, ’What are you asking? That cannot be done. I can cut the whole forest, that’s simple, but I cannot join this branch back to the tree; that is impossible!’

Buddha said, ’Now kill me, but remember that this can be done even by a child. Destruction can be done by anybody. When you create, only then are you a man. If you cannot join this branch back on the tree, don’t kill people. You cannot create people; creation is very limited – destruction is unlimited.’

Our capacity to destroy is far bigger than our capacity to create... and there are a few things which cannot be created at all. For example, we cannot create love: when it happens, it happens. We can prevent it happening. We cannot create surrender: we can prevent it happening. We cannot create anything that is really of any value, but we can prevent everything – and that’s what we go on doing.

So the first thing: surrender has to be total. The second thing: it has to be a happening, not a doing on your part. A surrender done, is already dead. You cannot do it so don’t try!

You have come here. Just wait, be here, and don’t be in a hurry; there is no hurry. Just listen to me, feel me, and if you don’t think about surrender the doubts will start disappearing soon. If you think too much about surrender those doubts will go on persisting. When you are not thinking of surrender what is the need for those doubts to come? There is no need! And then one day, unaware, it is there.

Then it is such a joy!

Remember only one thing: don’t prevent that moment. You can prevent it: you can close your door; that is within your capacity. At that time, remain open and let it happen.

It is a death to the ego, so you cannot do it. You are the one who is going to disappear in it, so how can you do it? But it is going to happen; I can see it on the way.

... just enjoy being here and don’t think of surrender at all. It is on the way; it will knock at your doors.

When it knocks, receive it.

[The sannyasin says she is a gestalt therapist.]

Very good! That may be one of the causes of why surrender is difficult.

... That can be one of the causes, but nothing to worry about. We can destroy that gestalt!

It happens that when you become very very efficient in reasoning, rationalising, thinking, intellectualising, and when you start knowing all kinds of explanations, it becomes more and more difficult to surrender because you start feeling that you know already – and you don’t!

That is one of the greatest miseries that is happening to the modern mind all over the world. Modern man is in such bad shape; it has never been so before. And the reason? – such an explosion of knowledge, and knowledge is so easily available.

You can go to college, you can go to university, you can go to the library: everything is available.

And that gives you a false sense of knowing. It creates a very very subtle ego inside, and then you are trapped. But it will go, mm? I have killed so many therapists – don’t be worried!

[A sannyasin had left a few days previously but had a strange experience at Bombay airport. He became afraid the plane would crash and he would die, so he returned to the ashram.]

It will be okay – just be here for a few more days. Sometimes it happens....

It had nothing to do with your travelling, it had nothing to do with the fear of death; it is something that is happening within. It looks like death, and one can become very very frightened about it. One can interpret it as if it is going to be something – some accident is going to happen, something is going to go wrong; so you became afraid of the airport. Next time there is no need. If you feel it again, just take the locket in your hand, remember me. There is no problem in it.

It is not a question of physical death; it is a question of a greater death than the physical. Mm? –

your ego is standing just on the verge so it is feeling giddy.

Be here for a few days and then go again, mm?

[A sannyasin had experienced much happiness and bliss and openness after the hypnotherapy group. She says she is afraid of this feeling.]

Yes, it is happening... and when it starts happening, one starts getting frightened too. When consciousness expands you start feeling fear because you don’t know what is going to happen now, where it will lead you.

With old familiar boundaries you feel okay. You are acquainted with them and you have gained a certain skill, a certain efficiency with them; with them you know who you are. With these new boundaries expanding your identity will be disappearing. You are in an identity crisis – so the fear!

Mm? now you don’t know who you are because your boundaries are no more the same.

Much happiness is ready to explode, and you are pushing it away because it can be too much; you may go mad – that is the fear. But nobody ever goes mad out of happiness: people only go mad out of misery. And nobody ever goes mad out of widening horizons. People go mad only when they are crippled and shrunk in and forced inside themselves, when they are chained from everywhere, enwalled, enclosed; then they go mad.

And if it feels maddening, then it is okay: be mad! Mm? if you want to call it mad, it is good; a few saints have called it madness too. But things are going very well. Do this camp as totally as possible and the energy will settle after the camp.

Just enjoy this new consciousness. And don’t be worried – I am here. That’s my whole function here: to destroy you and to create you again! Good!

[A sannyasin said that four days ago he started feeling strange. He was in Lonavla (a nearby hill station); he nearly got killed; fell in love; and has waves of energy rushes from the chest upwards: It’s beautiful but it’s terribly frightening.]

So next time you start feeling the wave just close your eyes and go into your belly, two inches below the navel. You can put your hand there so that you can feel. Just two inches, around two inches below the navel, is your hara centre. So just go there and start feeling that all those waves and all that energy is moving towards the navel, that the waves are accumulating there. The fear will disappear and you will have tremendous joy, almost orgasmic joy.

The energy is there but right now it is very wild. It has to be a little educated that’s all; it is a wild, primitive energy. In the beginning it is always so: when for the first time the energy erupts it is very primitive. It has to be a little cultured that’s all; you have to teach it a few things.

The first thing is: move it towards the stomach. If it goes towards the head it can create problems you can become very much frightened – because the head cannot contain that much energy. The stomach can.

In Japan they have two types of dolls. Zen masters keep these dolls to show to their disciples, particularly to western disciples. One doll that they keep on one side is a very beautiful doll but its head is very heavy – made of heavy metal. The other doll’s stomach is very heavy; it is made of metal. On the surface they look alike, but if you push the first doll it falls and it cannot get up because the head is too heavy. If you push the other doll it falls and suddenly gets up and sits again in the buddha posture.

This is to show where the energy should be – in the stomach. There it can be contained and there you can contain the whole universe. So Japanese say ’think from the belly’. They mean let all your energy be concentrated in the belly: your real mind should be there.

The brain cannot contain much and it does not need much: it lives on a very small quantity of electricity. With more electricity in the brain you start feeling terrified; everything goes berserk. It needs a very very slight quantity, a homeopathic dose. Just a little more and it becomes difficult.

That’s why you cannot sleep without a pillow, because if you sleep without a pillow more energy flows towards the head – with a pillow, less energy. So you can have a better sleep with a pillow.

If you keep your head lower than your bed you will not be able to sleep the whole night because energy will be flowing to your head.

That’s why, in yoga, they invented the head stand posture – because of this energy. When it is arising too much and going upwards and they cannot manage it in the head, they stand on the head so it starts going upwards to the feet. Then there is no problem... otherwise it can destroy the subtle mechanism of the brain.

Just start keeping it there. And sometimes if you enjoy, you can stand on your head too; that will be helpful. But never stand for more than five or seven minutes – at the most seven, mm? – because if you stand for more than seven the energy starts moving towards the head. It will move upwards only from five to seven minutes mm? – then it knows that the head is not there. It starts moving towards the head and of course it comes in a more rushing way because gravitation helps it. So never more than seven minutes; from five to seven minutes you can do it.

And whenever you feel that it is coming, just close your eyes... and you will enjoy it! It is a beautiful moment! For this I sent you to Lonavla, mm? It is good when it happens in the hills and mountains.

CHAPTER 12

Each individual is a gift of god

13 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho gives a sannyasin a name for a centre in the West.]

This will be the name: neerava. It means such a silence that sound is not a disturbance to it.

There are two kinds of silences: one silence which can be disturbed by sound.... That’s not very deep, that’s not really silence; it is just absence of sound. It has no positive quality to it; it is just absence of sound. Mm? sometimes when there is no sound, the traffic has stopped, it is night, you suddenly feel a silence. But it is not that it is silence: it is just that you are missing the usual noise and you become aware of that missing thing. If you look deeply into it you will find the missing noise is creating this silence; it has no centre of its own.

Then there is another kind of silence – a real silence. It has nothing to do with either the presence or the absence of sound. The sound can continue, the traffic can go on, the marketplace and all sorts of things go on, but a really silent man remains silent. The noise comes, passes by him: he remains undistracted, nothing distracts him. Inside he remains untrembling.

The centre of the cyclone – that is the meaning of neerava. That is the true silence, and that is the goal of all therapies, all meditations... because only out of that silence does one become healthy; only out of that silence does god start working through you. When you are full of noise you don’t allow god to function.

When you are full of silence there is no hindrance, there is no obstruction for the whole to take possession of you. Then the whole can flow through you. You don’t give any resistance; you remain open.

And all the effort that is made through therapies, meditations, is nothing but to help the person to come in contact with this innermost core of his being. Healing is through that. The healer cannot heal – the healer can only make the person aware of a healing source within himself. The physician only sends him back into his being.

The whole problem is that people have lost contact with their own soul. That soul is silence, it is utter silence.... So start a small centre.

You can continue therapies, some meditation and some work, and once you start people will start coming.

[A sannyasin has brought his girlfriend, who is not a sannyasin, to see Osho. She is too scared to take sannyas.]

That happens to every potential sannyasin. Whosoever is going to become a sannyasin, becomes afraid, mm? – so you are fortunate that you are afraid. People who are not going to become sannyasins don’t feel any fear. Why should they? They have no possibility to grow in that direction.

Fear comes because you become alert that here is something that you can get involved in. Mm? –

the more you are here, the more afraid you will be. When the fear becomes too much one becomes a sannyasin! Then there is nothing else to do.

If you want to get rid of fear become a sannyasin today – otherwise you can wait but those days will be of fear.

[Another sannyasin says that he would like to have a longer relationship with a woman than he has had to date, but he finds many resistances within himself, like his immaturity, so it hasn’t happened yet.... ]

Mm mm... you have some wrong notions about relationships. Only immature people relate. When you become mature (chuckling) what is the point of relating? So don’t make that a problem.

Immaturity is okay, perfectly okay. And how is one going to mature? You have to relate with people; through that will come maturity. And when you have really become mature there is no need to relate or anything. Then one is perfectly happy with oneself. One can give one’s love, but there is no relationship. So relate as much as you want because soon this immaturity will go!

The second thing: a relationship has nothing to do with period, time. Whether longer or short, that is not meaningful at all. The question is of intensity and depth.

Even if the relationship only lasts for twenty-four hours, if you really go into it, it is tremendously fulfilling. And it may last for twenty-four years and nothing happens. You can see so many dead husbands and wives living together for years, for centuries it seems, and nothing has happened!

Length is not the question – quality, not quantity.

So the second thing: drop the idea of longer or shorter; that is not your worry. If it stays, good; if it disappears, good.

And what can you do? Right now if you are immature, you are, so you have to relate in this immaturity. In fact the very desire to have a long relationship is part of immaturity – otherwise one moment of love is quite enough.

A mature person is independent; an.

immature person is dependent.

It is because of the

dependency that we long for a longer relationship. We want a long relationship so that we can depend on the same person forever, so that there is no need to face new challenges, new problems.

If we are with the same person, having the same problems, we can become acquainted with the relationship, skilful in it.

The right thing is to relate with many people before you start settling with someone. Know as many women as possible before you choose a woman to stay with for your whole life.

My own observation is that people should not get married before thirty-five years of age. By that time they are experienced enough: by that time they have known so many women that they can choose. And the same is true for women.

The world is big and there are so many different kinds of people. Why be in a hurry to settle for a long relationship?

And each individual is beautiful – a gift of god!

... Relate, relate with strangers, and don’t hanker for any stable relationship right now. When the right person comes along, things will settle on their own. And why be in such a hurry to settle?

Remain a vagabond as long as you can afford to! Right? Good!

CHAPTER 13

Unless you meet god how can you be satisfied

15 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin says he has a lot of tension in his back and neck – tension that is so painful at times that it totally occupies his attention.... It comes in the silent parts of the meditations.

Osho asks him for details, and then checks his energy.]

It is concerned with meditation, so don’t think about it as a disease or as if something is wrong, mm?

– it is perfectly good. It will disappear; you need not be worried about it. When it comes next time, just close your eyes and concentrate there where it is; focus your whole concentration there.

First you will find a big patch of pain: go on focusing and you will find that it is shrinking, becoming smaller, smaller, smaller. Go on looking deeper into it; forget everything and don’t try to evade it.

Don’t try to prevent it being there. Don’t condemn it; it is something beautiful that is happening.

Once it goes the energy will rise higher. It is just passing a certain block, so you feel the pain. Go on looking, and by and by you will be able to see that the spot is shrinking and is becoming smaller, smaller and smaller. Then it will become just like a pinpoint: it will be almost impossible to keep alert of it. For moments you will miss it, again it will be there you will miss it, again it will be there. The smaller the area of pain, the more intense it will be. When it is there just like a pinpoint it will be very very piercing and sharp.

When you have come to the final atomic state of it.... Mm? this is bringing it to an atomic state; that’s what in homeopathy they call potency. The smaller dose has more potency, so the homeopath goes on making the dose smaller and smaller and smaller. And that is exactly what modern physics has found – that the atom has the most vital energy in it.

And that’s what you have to do: go on making it smaller and smaller, smaller and smaller. When it becomes just an atom... by atom, I mean when you cannot make it smaller, it cannot be divided any more, you have come to the last particle of it. That is the meaning of the word atom: no more divisible. You have come to the last, the ultimate unit: then it will become very sharp – sharper than you can imagine, incredibly sharp. It will cut you like a sword, but then immediately it will disappear, disappear forever, and the block will have been crossed.

It will take some time, but go on doing it. And don’t take it as something wrong. Be happy about it!

Have a very very positive attitude about it – it is not negative. Nothing to be worried about! Good!

[The tantra group is present. One participant says she feels an underlying sadness in everything, but there is no reason for it. Osho checks her energy.]

Don’t make a problem out of it; it is not a problem at all. It is very very natural to you... it is exactly your pace.

There are different wavelengths with people. For a few people, sadness is not a problem. In fact, it should not be called sadness as far as they are concerned: it is a kind of sobriety, it is a kind of calmness, quietude. you can force yourself to come out of it but that will take effort and you will feel tired. Simply relax into it. This is perfectly okay; nothing is wrong in it.

One of the greatest problems that faces every human being is not to compare with others – otherwise you will create many problems.

Somebody has a great laugh and you start comparing: ’I never laugh like that, so something must be wrong!’ But it may not be natural for you to laugh that way; only smiling may be natural to you. You can force the laughter; then you will destroy your smile. That laughter will be shallow and false and violent.... It depends on different people. People are so unique that nothing about you is comparable with anybody else.

So just look into yourself. My feeling is that your sadness is not sadness: it is just a kind of silence, a kind of at-ease inside you. But when you see other people dancing and bubbling with joy, you start comparing – out of comparison, the problem.

Just think: if you are alone in the world and there is nobody else, will you call this sadness? You won’t... it is not! Yes, some people are sad, then they have to be brought out of it; but you are not sad that way. Your energy is perfectly okay. You are not a very extrovert person mm? – more of an introvert. You want to be with yourself more and then you feel easier, at home.

Yes, good – you can talk to people and meet with people, but too long with them and you start feeling a little restlessness. In the crowd you feel you are missing something; alone with yourself, you feel happier. Certainly your happiness will not become a belly-laughter – no; it will be at the most a smile, but that’s how it has to be with you.

One person’s medicine is another person’s poison... so never compare. Just look inside: if things are going well and you are feeling okay, it is perfectly okay. Drop that idea!

[Another group member said she cannot find satisfaction in anything she does. Throughout her life she has felt a dissatisfaction – in alcohol, in drugs, and now with food... I’m too afraid of facing this feeling.]

Mm mm – no, nothing to be worried about. Nobody is ever satisfied; people only differ in degrees of dissatisfaction. And the reason is that unless you meet god, how can you be satisfied? Drugs won’t do, food won’t do, sex won’t do.... It is a deep urge for god, for the whole, so you can try everything and everything fails. Everything is bound to fail, because only god can succeed.

Nothing is wrong with you, nothing is wrong with your effort to satisfy yourself. That’s how one stumbles in the dark, gropes in the dark. There is no other way – this is the only way: we are in the dark, we find ourselves in the dark and we want the light so we start groping. Sometimes we find them, small candles, very momentarily. One moment the light is there, another moment it is gone.

How can one be satisfied? One needs eternal light.

Our hunger is for god – hence the continuous dissatisfaction. And it is good that you are aware.

The really unfortunate people are those who are not aware of this. They are unsatisfied but they go on pulling along somehow. They think ’Maybe a little more money, and satisfaction will be coming; another drug, a better drug, or better food or a more beautiful woman, or something’... but their mind remains the same. They have not yet looked deeply into it; they have not seen the fact that nothing satisfies and nothing is going to satisfy.

Yes, it is very very difficult to face it because that means that one feels utterly frustrated and hopeless. So we avoid facing it... but my whole effort here is to bring you to this comer, to force you into this comer so you have to recognise this fact – that nothing is going to satisfy! Out of that great dissatisfaction something is born. That’s what god is....

CHAPTER 14

Become a child, full of wonder

16 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin, returning to the West, says she is confused.]

Confusion remains, and one has to learn to live with it because life cannot be sorted out; it is so big.

The confusion arises because of our impossible effort to sort everything out; it is too big for that!

There is no way to know everything so something or other always remains unknown. That unknown goes on creating confusion.

So one has to learn to live with it, then by and by it disappears and instead of confusion a totally different new thing arises... and that’s what is called wonder. It is the same energy that becomes confusion or wonder.

When a child has the same energy he simply feels wonder – because he is not in any way concerned about solving anything; he is ready to accept the mystery of it. He has no conflict between the known and the unknown; he does not make any distinction between the real and the dream.

Sometimes it happens that a child may have been playing with a toy in his dream and when he awakes he cries for the toy and asks, ’Where has it gone?’ We go on saying that it was just a dream but he says, ’But where is it now?’ He makes no distinction between the dream and the real, he does not make distinctions. If you don’t make distinctions confusion cannot arise.

So the more a person is trying to solve things, the more confused he will become. Intellectual people become more confused than emotional people. Then there are gut people also. They never become confused: they simply like things as they come.

The moment we think about life as if it is a problem, we are in confusion. The moment we start thinking that it is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived, that there is no way to know and whatsoever we know will remain very very limited; the unknown will remain unlimited.... We can create a small candlelight around ourselves but the whole existence remains dark. How can you be unconfused? You will remain confused if you don’t accept that darkness, if you don’t accept the mystery of life.

Yes, there are problems and there are many things which one would like to sort out, but they cannot be sorted out. This is what I call learning to live with it. Once you start learning to live with it, by and by confusion disappears, because confusion is an interpretation, and instead of confusion the same energy becomes more and more full of wonder. You are simply surprised by the mystery of life, you are simply surprised that nothing can be solved. You are simply surprised that it is not a puzzle; it is a mystery. And the mystery is more fundamental than us – because we come out of it.

The mystery was there before we came in, the mystery will be there when we are gone, so the mystery is infinite. We are just small waves of the ocean. Confusion arises and the wave sometimes goes mad. It is not an accident that great thinkers in the West – a Friedrich Nietzsche or a Mayakovsky – people who were really of great intelligence have almost always gone mad.

Now my feeling about Nietzsche is that had he been in India he would have become a buddha. His intelligence is superb, incomparable – but he simply went into a madhouse, a mad asylum, and died as a madman. In India the same energy would have been transformed with a totally different outlook.

He would have become a poet. He had that quality and unconsciously many of his writings are more poetic than philosophic: ’Thus spake Zarathustra’ is great poetry, as great as Bhagavadgita. But he went mad, because a wrong notion exists in the western mind that everything has to be clear-cutly solved; everything has to be reduced to statistics. No comer of mind should be left in the dark.

Everything should finally be decided in black and white, only then can we be at ease. Then there is confusion.

Become a child: don’t try to solve it – it is too big and in trying to solve it you will miss your life.

Those beautiful moments which could have been of tremendous joy will be lost in trying somehow to manage the problems of life, to solve the confusions of life, the riddles of life, and it will be a burden rather than being a celebration.

Don’t be cerebral, don’t be in the head. Start enjoying more, laughing more. Start approaching the mystery of life more innocently... with no concept of finding the answer. There is none, there exists none. The answer is no answer. The wise man drops questioning. The moment you drop questioning there is no confusion; suddenly it disappears. The confusion is created by our questioning mind.

My whole effort here is to create an unquestioning consciousness – a great trust, a deep acceptance, a reverence for life. In fact, the very effort to solve it is disrespectful. It means we want to reduce god to a syllogism. We want to reduce love into chemistry. We want to reduce everything into the manageable... and wherever we find that things are unmanageable, beyond us, cannot be grasped, we are in confusion.

Turn this confusion into mystery – it is the same energy, and mystery is such a joy! Confusion is such a disease, confusion creates hell!

Wherever you are, continue to meditate. And let this be your approach: create more wonder in life, remain surprised, and remain available for more and more surprise. Let each moment be an encounter with the mysterious. Continue to meditate and help my people wherever you are.

Keep this with you (Osho passes her a box), and whenever you need me, just put it in your hands, sit silently, and remain completely unmoving, just like a buddha statue, as if you have become a stone statue. Do this just for three minutes and you will feel me whenever you need... and come back!

[Osho tells a sannyasin he should be total in everything he does here. You can bring a horse to the water but you can’t make him drink, he says... this reality may be dull, but with a slight change of emphasis, a slightly different perspective, another reality becomes available to you. That’s what these groups here are about: they give you insights into other dimensions of your being, give you glimpses of other ways of being and experiencing life... can bring a radical change in you.]

I have looked into you, and there is not much of a problem. You have a simple being, not very complex; that’s why I’m saying just to do. And doing will be enough... things will start happening.

[The sannyasin says he is a gardener.]

Very good! That may be one of the causes why you are so simple. Gardeners, farmers, fishermen, woodcutters, have a totally different kind of energy – the best kind of energy. When a politician comes he carries such a nuisance inside him, such a deceptive kind of energy. He does not know what he is saying, he does not know what he is. He is one thing, he goes on saying another and does something else again. He is so divided: he is many people, he is a crowd.

When a man who is a money-maniac, comes to me, then it is very difficult, very. very difficult, because he knows only one value – that is money. Now, by meditating you cannot get money, so he cannot get into meditation, howsoever much he wants. His only value is money: all that counts in the world is money. Now, out of meditation money is not going to be produced. Although he has come to meditate he cannot because his whole orientation is against it.

A politician cannot go deep in groups because he is afraid to lose the ego, and that is his whole stake in life. He wants to make the ego more and more strong; he wants to become more and more successful. He wants to be the first man in the world; he is ambitious. He is violent, he is aggressive

– and all these groups teach you how to love, how to be non-violent, how to be non-aggressive and how to drop ambition and the ego.

Now, even if he comes for some reason – maybe he is getting a little bit too worried, maybe he cannot sleep, maybe his health is deteriorating, maybe he is getting heart attacks and blood pressure and this and that – and he wants to be helped, he cannot be because the basic foundation of his life energy is so wrong.

It is not an accident that jesus could have as his followers only people like you: farmers, fishermen, woodcutters. Not that there were not professors available, not that there were not great rabbis and religious priests, not that there were not politicians; they have always been here. The world has never been in such a state, in such a blessed and blissful state, that politicians were not there; they have always been there. They didn’t turn up, and sometimes even if they did come, they were not able to connect with Jesus. Only very simple people...

The people who collected the gospels were very illiterate, uneducated people, simple people. That’s why the christian gospels have a beauty which the Vedas don’t have, which the Dhammapada is missing – because the Vedas were written by great scholars, very literate people, trained philosophically, theoretically, logically. They don’t have that simplicity, that down-to-earthness, that concreteness. They don’t have that natural, metaphoric mind. When a farmer thinks, he thinks about trees and plants and animals.

Just the other day I was reading....

Two small children were asked to make a sentence to explain the word ’slow’. The child who came from the city said ’Slow means travelling in an old ford’. The boy who had come from a village was a farmer’s boy. He said, ’Slow means a cow walking while she is pregnant.’

Mm? now, the difference: a ford and a cow pregnant. Such an alive phenomenon – a cow pregnant, and a dead mechanism – some old T-model ford....

A different kind of mind exists when you are with nature: researchers call it the metaphorical mind.

It is not mathematical; it lives in metaphors. That’s why jesus talks in parables. People ask him intricate, complex, philosophical questions, and he answers in such a simple metaphorical way: he tells a story or a parable.

Very good. Just be totally here and allow me to do something.

[A sannyasin who has returned from the Himalayas said it was easy to be high there, to feel thankful

– here in the city with the smog it is difficult.]

That has also to be learned... because if you cannot be thankful here, the quality is of the mountains.

It has not entered you, it has not become part of you. To be in the mountains is good, but then one has to keep those mountains inside, the himalayas within, and then you carry them wherever you go. And that is the criterion, that is the test!

You can also be that high here; only then does that highness have any value – otherwise you will lose it again. Then it is a drug trip... so it is again the same thing. At a higher altitude the gravitation is less. When people are not there, people’s vibes are not there.

When you live with the trees, with the mountains, stars, moon and sun, naturally, you live beyond human society. You live with far simpler organisms: trees, animals, birds. They don’t have a mind, they don’t create the mind-wave around you, so you are alone there. You don’t have anything to make you disturbed. Nobody insults you, nobody scorns you, nobody disturbs you.

[The sannyasin says: My wife!]

That is not much... that is not much... and in the mountains even the wife becomes silent, because the mountains will affect her too. There is more oxygen, there is pure air; these all make chemical changes. You feel more at ease, more together... but then it is nothing: if you come back and you lose it, it is meaningless.

You have to come to the world and go on having and containing that silence. So, go many times to the mountains but go back again and again to the world. That day you can carry the mountains into the marketplace is a day of great blessing.

So never become an escapist... because that happens to many people. Once they start living in the mountains they become afraid of the world – and all kinds of fear is poisonous. Then they have not become free; they have instead become afraid.

There are many sannyasins, old, ancient sannyasins, living in the caves; they cannot come back to the marketplace. They have become very afraid. Now they are afraid to lose their peace... but this peace is worthless! You should go where the challenge is and see whether you can retain it. If you can retain it, then something has happened; if you cannot retain it, then it is meaningless. It is good to practise in the mountains but the examination will be in the plains.

So come back again and again to poona, come back to the world, and try to keep your quality. It can be kept; you just have to be alert about it. It can be kept. Just keep your consciousness vibrating in the same way it was vibrating there; don’t get distracted by people.

It is very easy to throw the responsibility on the smog and the people and the market, but that is not the thing. You throw the responsibility on others; you are just finding an excuse to lose your high!

Keep your high. Let people be there, let there be smog. What can you do?

The smog is there, the people are there, and they are the way they are – keep your cool!

... Next time, try it. And you can create it here again! Just try one meditation every day....

For one hour in the morning, just sit with closed eyes. Forget Poona and visualise the mountains: just visualise the mountains, relive being there. And every night before you go to sleep, do it again for ten minutes. In the morning go to the river, sit there, and for one hour visualise that you are in the mountains again. Move in the mountains, smell the mountains – the fresh air, the trees, the flowers... Listen to the sounds. Just be there again.

And it is not to be just a memory trip: relive it! Don’t go on standing outside of it and looking at it like a film being played on a screen, no! Be part of it, a participant in it, not a spectator but an actor in it. Be on the stage. Live the whole thing: you are moving on a mountain path, it has rained and the earth is wet. Smell the new rain, the trees and the wind.

You will be surprised: you can catch hold of it, of that spirit again. And in the night before you go to sleep, just for ten minutes sit in your bed, again visualise, and go into sleep.

Go into sleep thinking of the Himalayas, being in the Himalayas, fall asleep in the Himalayas. And in the morning you will be surprised! Do this for one week and then report. It will be far more valuable if you can create that here... and it can be created!

I am in the himalayas here so there is

Just do this experiment for seven days, then write a letter, mm?

Prem means love and tao means the ultimate law – the ultimate law of love. And that is the only law: all else is just arbitrary, all else is utilitarian. Only love is non-utilitarian. All else exists for us. It is only love for which we exist. Love is the end, the ’summum bonum’.

Once we start falling into love energy we start growing. The more we are resisting love energy, inhibiting it, we remain stuck.

And tao is the chinese word but the best yet used for the ultimate. Christians use ’god’ but that has been so much misused: it has fallen into wrong hands and all associations have gone wrong.

The indians have used ’dharma’, but that too has become dirty. ’Tao’ remains one of the purest words ever used for the ultimate because ’tao’ has no meaning so nobody can corrupt it. When a word has a meaning it can be corrupted. Tao is just a sound: it does not say anything; it simply indicates. It does not say; it shows.

And the basic thing in tao is to go with the whole – never to go against it, never to push the river and never to try to go upcurrent. Mm? – that’s what ego is.

Whenever we are pushing, trying to prove something, trying to get something, trying to fight for something, trying to struggle, whenever there is some kind of will, we are against tao. Tao is will-lessness: just going with the current wherever it is going, moving with the river....

[Osho suggests some groups to the new sannyasin who assisted therapy groups in the west. She says: I have this idea about therapy – I don’t want therapy... but I’ll do them.]

Mm mm, it is not therapy, because you are not a patient and it is not therapy. The word is ugly... but this is a necessary evil with language: whatsoever word we use it is never true to the fact.

Now, therapy is ugly. It presupposes that somebody is abnormal, ill, diseased, that somebody is not in the right shape, that somebody is a case, somebody is mental or something. It presupposes a division between the patient and the doctor. It is one of the dualities, as there are other dualities, and naturally the doctor is the knower, he is the authority, he is in the know, so he manipulates the patient, he dominates the patient, he oppresses the patient. In the name of helping him he exploits the patient.

So you are right – the word is not very good but any word.... And because the human mind lives in dualities, it immediately creates that class: the dominator and the dominated, the oppressor and the oppressed; it always creates that classification. It has nothing to do with words; it is the mind.

It always makes one the master and another the slave, and then the whole nonsense goes on persisting. Names change, labels change, but the same thing continues.

To me, the reality of therapy is love. It is not that the therapist is the knower, no, and it is not that the patient is ill. All that is the case is that the therapist, or whatsoever name we call him, is able to become available to the energy of the whole; he has learned that art. Through his availability he helps the other, whom we call the patient, to become available to that healing energy. The therapist is just a door, and he is as much helped as the patient... sometimes even more!

My own observation is that the therapist grows faster than the patient. And if he understands this too

– that therapy is a function of love, that you simply become a bridge, a vehicle, between the healed and the real healer, god...

CHAPTER 15

To have to risk all

17 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho explains the meaning deva savya – all is divine. Without any exception, all is divine; the moment you exclude something you have not understood this. Everything that god has given you, Osho continues, has to be used and transformed because nothing is without meaning or significance.... ]

[The new sannyasin says: I changed my mind several times!]

It happens... because it is difficult for the mind to decide anything; it is natural for it to waver. The moment the mind becomes non-wavering, it disappears.

[The mind lives through division, says Osho, and can rule you because it always divides you over every issue, large or small from god and sannyas to what dress to wear today. Understanding this, you begin to look somewhere deeper. Decision never comes from the mind; it comes from somewhere deeper, somewhere higher... it comes from your core. This decision has been waiting there, Osho says, growing there for your whole life... ]

There are three kinds of people who take sannyas: one, who takes it from the decision of the mind.

His sannyas is not of any worth because it will change any moment; the mind changes so it cannot be of worth. You are making your house on the sands, on shifting sands. This house is not going to be a real shelter. Or, you are making a house of playing cards: a small breeze and it will be gone.

People who take sannyas through their mind decision, really don’t take it.

Then there are people who take sannyas from something deeper than the mind but who are still not aware from where the decision is coming – just like you. There is more possibility that their sannyas will become a very very radical change in their life, but there is also a possibility that they may get into the trap of the mind again, because they are not conscious and they cannot clearly separate what is mind and what is not mind. They can fall back, they can go ahead: both doors are open.

And then there is a third kind of sannyasin who knows perfectly well that it has nothing to do with the mind; then there is no falling back. The second can become the third very easily. That’s what I’m trying to make you clear about – that it is not of the mind, so now the mind cannot disturb it. If it has been taken by the mind, the mind can drop it. If it has not been taken by the mind, then the mind is impotent to do anything about it: it will go on growing.

You have been waiting for it: now the opportunity has come use it with your total energy, with your whole heart. Many times it happens that the opportunity comes and passes by. We have been waiting for it for years, and when it comes we are paralysed.

Somebody asked one great millionaire, morgan, what the secret of his success was. He said, ’When the opportunity comes, I immediately jump into it’. The man who was asking obviously was a failure in life, otherwise why should he ask what the secret of success was?

He said, ’That’s right, but how do you know that the opportunity has come? Opportunities come to me too, but by the time I jump they are gone. How do you manage?’

Morgan said, ’I keep on jumping. I don’t wait for the opportunity, I keep on jumping! So whenever it comes, it finds me jumping. I immediately get into it; it is not a question of waiting.’

And my feeling is that opportunities come every moment, because god is. Just don’t miss it this time!

[A sannyasin couple are leaving for the West. The man says he tries to stop himself from getting high – for example, dropping out of the meditation camp half way through; and continual calamities in the relationship.]

Many people do that; it is nothing special. Drop it! It is very ordinary, it is just the average mind, very mediocre.

There is a constant fear in everybody, in almost everybody, of Really getting high. The fear comes because the moment you get high you cannot remain in your ego. When you get high you cannot remain in your finite, limited world; it starts being shattered. When you invite the infinite and it starts coming – and it comes like a torrent, a flood, you start feeling ’I will be washed away’ – then you start clinging to the past and stop doors opening.

It is the fear of the infinite, it is the fear of god himself – but the fear will continue unless you look directly into its face. If you want to remain the way you are, then it’s okay. Nobody is trying to change you; why should anybody try to change you? If you feel happy the way you are, then this is the way you have to be. If you don’t feel happy, take courage. Then you will have to jump, you will have to take the risk... and the risk has to be taken.

So just see that these two possibilities are there. You can remain the same; then there is no risk, it is safer. But you remain the same: you are not happy so you remain unhappy, you are miserable so you remain miserable. But there is no risk in it. This alternative has one thing good in it: it is very convenient: no risk, no change, no drastic change of your life style. You are very protected in this way. You have nothing to protect but you are very much protected. You have nothing to live for but life is secure.

The other alternative has great potentiality in it, but that potentiality starts with risk. One has to be a gambler and one has to risk all. You cannot just risk partially; it doesn’t work. Then you remain in two boats, always ready to jump back whenever things become too much. The old boat has to sink so that there is nowhere to jump. The old bridge has to be broken so that you cannot turn back. It is risky, a gambler’s risk. It needs courage, needs youth, a young mind, needs to go into danger, insecurity... but once you start moving, there is great joy, there is great celebration.

So these are the two alternatives: with one there is no risk. There is security, but no joy. With the other there is great joy, great possibilities of celebration, but there is risk.

Ordinarily we would like to have all the joy with all the security – and that doesn’t happen. That’s not the way of life, and nothing can be done about it. That’s what we want: we want the impossible. We want security, safety, control, and we want joy, celebration and great adventure. Both things cannot happen together, you cannot have both: they don’t come in the same package.

This has to be deeply understood... and then one has to choose! And don’t go on wavering: if you choose to remain the same, be the same. Then forget all meditations, all groups. If you don’t want to be the same, if you are fed up with your misery, then take the jump! And I cannot take the jump for you; you will have to take the jump. I can show you the way but you will have to travel. So make it very clear!

Things are very clear really, but how do things continue? Things continue because we go on hoping for the impossible, we go on hoping against all hope. We think there must be some way that we can remain secure and can also enjoy new pastures of life.

It has never happened! It is not going to happen because it cannot happen; in the very nature of things it is not possible. Seeing this, one takes a decision... and decision is always good. This indecisiveness is bad, because indecisiveness by and by makes you lousy. You lose sharpness, you lose keenness, you lose clarity, you become more and more cloudy. Much smoke comes around your flame and the flame cannot be seen.

Decisiveness brings light. Even if you decide to remain the same, even that will bring light to you; things will be clear. Even if you decide wrongly, then too decision is good. If you decide rightly it is a great blessing, but if you decide wrongly, then too it is better than the indecisive state of mind.

Decisiveness is always good; man is born through decisiveness. Remaining wavering, doing things half-heartedly, doing and not doing, just going so far and then turning back, is a sheer wastage of energy. And if you remain This way too long, it becomes your habit. Then it becomes a deep rut in your mind: again and again you do the same thing and the rut goes deeper and deeper and deeper.

Stop it!

[So when you return from the West], come with decision. And the first thing you have to tell me when you come back is this, mm? We are going to decide – next [time] you come and either this way or that we will decide... but we will decide! And I’m not saying to decide for adventure; no, I’m not saying that. I am saying to just decide: whatsoever you want, decide about it, but decide, mm?

so something starts happening. It is time.

And the same thing will be in your relationship – because this indecisiveness of the mind will have its repercussions everywhere, whatsoever you do. Mm? my feeling is that when you are in love with her (looking at the woman), then too you are not totally in it, and when you are angry at her, you are not totally angry at her.

When you are angry, deep down, you go on telling yourself, ’This is not good. Don’t be so angry.

Anger is not good.’ That anger is there but you are never really angry... and then in everything you will remain only half-hearted. So things go on, somehow, but it is not a dance; it is a kind of dragging.

And every love affair brings all problems up. Mm? – it is a great meditation. It brings up all that is there inside you, it stirs everything up.

So, good – I am always in favour of love affairs because they bring everything to the surface. If somebody is alert and wants to do something, love is a great opportunity because it brings things to the surface; you can change them. When you know them, you can change them. When they are in the unconscious, underground, you don’t know them so how can you change them? They go on manipulating you from the back.

So decide about that too. When you are angry be really angry, and when you are in love be wildly in love! In both things go totally. And don’t be afraid about anything; there is nothing to fear.

She will be also very happy... because to live with a man who can be total in anything is a great joy.

Yes, even to suffer the anger of a man who is total in his anger is a joy because of the heat of it, the warmth of it.

Have you not watched the ugliness of a man who wants to be angry and remains polite? He is very ugly, he is very cold. Nobody can be happy with him and nobody is befooled by him: everybody feels that he is angry. You cannot befool a woman particularly. You may be able to befool a man more easily, but not a woman, because women deep down are still in their intuitive being; they have not become as heady as man. You can deceive a man very easily but before a woman you stand naked: she functions almost like a mirror.

No need to be afraid; when you love a woman there is no need to be afraid. There is no need to hide and there is no need to repress. Just be true and authentic. If love survives your authenticity, then only is it worthwhile. Don’t be afraid. If the love cannot survive the authenticity, then it is not worthwhile.

Remember this as a criterion: only that love is worthwhile which can survive your authenticity, which does not make you a hypocrite, which helps you to become more real. That love is worth something!

If the love can survive only with lies, hypocrisies, pretensions, it is not worthwhile; it is not love at all!

So there (in the West), let it be a long love meditation till [you return], mm? If love survives it will be something valuable; if it disappears, that too is very good. My feeling is that it will survive. Go into it!

[The woman says: I don’t know! I feel stupid – I never know what to say!]

No, that’s perfectly okay... that’s perfectly okay.

Help him to be authentic, mm? – and through his authenticity you will be helped to be authentic yourself.

Make love a situation to grow. Don’t allow love to become a bondage, don’t let love chain you. Let it be a freedom: help each other to be more and more free and more and more true.

If we cannot help the other person we love to be true, then it is not love. Mm? – the only gift love can give is the gift of truth. All other gifts are just false substitutes. Lovers go on giving gifts to each other – sometimes soap, sometimes perfume, sometimes this and that... all nonsense! If you want to give a real gift to the lover, then help him to be true! And by helping him to be true you will be helped to be true, because truth helps truth, lies help lies.

Bring one lie into your life and a thousand and one will follow. Bring one truth into your life and you will find a queue is standing there; many more truths are ready to come in. The same attracts the same.

So don’t make love just an ordinary phenomenon of a man loving a woman, a woman loving a man; don’t make it an ordinary phenomenon. My sannyasins should make love a great opportunity to grow towards spirituality. Make it a jumping board for the unknown; help each other in every possible way, and remain totally open.

The moment you hide something from your lover it simply shows that you don’t love him enough yet – otherwise why hide? Lovers should not have any secrets; they should be utterly open to each other. Then you will see that when you are utterly open fight by and by disappears, argumentation disappears. Otherwise out of twenty-four hours lovers spend twenty-three hours in fighting. This is such a costly affair and such a foolish thing!

For twenty-three hours fighting and for one hour they are somehow loving... otherwise they are continuously arguing and nagging, trying to dominate, possess, manipulate, to do a thousand and one things which are not love at all. It is a miracle how love survives all these tricks and politics.

Drop all possessiveness, drop all politics. Help each other and respect the other’s freedom so that he can respect yours. Good!

Prabhu sharan. It means at the feet of god. Prabhu means god, sharan means at the feet... and let that be your way of life, let that be your very path – deep humbleness. Just think of yourself at the feet of god everywhere, and let everybody’s feet be god’s feet.

Nothing is a problem with you, things are very simple with you. You have a very simple heart, it can suddenly start moving, but this attitude will help you tremendously.

I will start working on you from this very moment. Just think of yourself as being at the feet of god

– each moment let that be your.... Breathe it in, Breathe it out; let that be your very climate. And things are going to happen! Good.

CHAPTER 16

There are not golden rules

18 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho tells a sannyasin there are some things about his energy that it will be helpful for him to know.

You haven’t allowed yourself to ever be wild, you’ve always had a subtle control inside you – and that can be a hindrance to spiritual growth... ]

There is a subtle difference between repression and control. Repression is not having understanding of what you are doing; you simply repress something. Control is a little more intellectual; you feel convinced that this is the right thing to do, so you control.

You are not repressed but you are controlled. Intellectually you understand what is the right thing to do and what is not, and you try to do the right thing. By and by that has become a habit, the very style of your life. That’s why you are not streaming, not flowing, not dancing. And unless you dance, unless you go wholeheartedly with your energy – even if it takes a wild form, even if it becomes almost maddening – you will not grow. One has to go with it totally, and one day a different kind of discipline arises. There are three different things: one is repression without even intellectual understanding; another is control with intellectual understanding; the third is discipline with spiritual awareness... and that is what is needed. We substitute it by control or many more people substitute it by simply repressing.

You are in the second category, the controlled category. It is better than people who live with repression but one step more is needed: you have to drop control and you have to come to an inner discipline – which is not a kind of control at all. It is simply your awareness: you know and your act follows your knowing. The act is spontaneous like your shadow follows you; it follows your knowing.

So while you are here, relax control; that is the first thing. The second thing: whenever you feel that you can go a little more, try. For example, you are dancing and you feel that if you try a little more you can go a little wilder. Then try it – because we never know how much we can go unless we try.

Slowly, slowly, you take one step, two steps, three steps, and you become more confident and a great trust arises in energy – that wherever it leads it is good. The day that trust arises the transformation starts.

We have been taught not to trust the energy, not to trust life. We have been taught just to trust reason which is a very small fragment and which is in the service of the society. All that is vital, alive, has been denied, and dead reason has been given full rein.

So when you are doing the dynamic meditation or the kundalini or some other meditation and you feel that you can go a step more, then go. That one step will make it possible to go one step more, then go. That one step will make it possible to go one step more and so on and so forth: one step leads to another. Soon you will be going far away from your self-drawn boundaries.

Once you start going beyond the boundaries you start expanding.

That’s what expansion of

consciousness is, and that’s what man is always hankering for.

There is no need to be small; you can be the whole! Even the sky is not the limit: you can be as big as the whole existence, but for that great courage is needed.

We live in a very very shrunken state with small boundaries which we hide behind. Come out! Those caves will not give you light; in those caves light never reaches. Come out in the open!

So first, relax control; second, whenever you feel a boundary try to go at least one step beyond it; and third, don’t be afraid of the wild and the mad.

If a person remains afraid of the wild and the mad he cannot expand. And the fear is unnecessary...

in fact the fear is very dangerous. If a person remains afraid of the wild and the animal and the mad, then all madness goes on accumulating. Layer upon layer you are piling it up: one day it will be too much. One day it will be so much that you will not be able to control it. It will explode and then you will be nowhere. That’s how madness happens.

Madness happens because of the control. These people in the madhouses are very very controlled people: their madness is the conclusion of their whole life’s effort.

A man who allows madness, allows wildness, never accumulates any madness and is out of danger.

Rather than having it wholesale it is better to have it retail. It is very good to be angry sometimes rather than not being angry for ten years and then one day murdering a man. In those small homeopathic doses anger is good; nothing is wrong. If you don’t use it in small doses, one day it will be so much that your system will not be able to bear it. These three things, remember.

[Osho explains that prem means love, abhinivesh means devotion... and that’s what his path is going to be. Start looking at life through the eyes of devotion, and there are different ways of regarding life.... ]

When a scientist looks at a certain thing he looks with a rational eye; he wants to know what it is.

When a poet looks at the same thing he looks with the aesthetic eye; he wants to enjoy it. When a devotee looks at the same thing he looks with the eye of devotion; he wants to worship it.

It may be a rose flower.... A scientist looking at it, thinks of the chemicals, elements, composition, colour, of how it is made, of what it is made. He starts analysing, dissecting in his mind, categorising, labelling things, thinking of what species it belongs to, from what country it comes.

When a poet looks at the same rose flower he is not worried about what country it comes from; he is not worried about the composition, about the chemistry of the rose. He is simply interested in the alchemy of the rose, mm! – the beauty of it, the joy of it. In the scientist’s mind the rose becomes an analysis; in the poet’s mind the rose becomes a song... and it is the same rose!

It can be looked at with the eyes of devotion too. A devotee looks at the rose as if it is god manifest; for a devotee everything is god manifest. God is green in the trees, red in the rose... god is a cloud in the clouds and light in the sun rays... god is a child in a child and very very old in an old man.

Everything is divine; that is the vision of the devotee.

So for a devotee the rose comes as an incarnation of god. He wants to worship it. He would like to bow down to it. He would like to surrender to it: he would like to dance and surrender around it. For the scientist the rose becomes analysis, chemistry; for the poet it becomes a song or a painting. For the devotee it becomes god himself!

The devotee’s vision is the greatest vision. All other visions are partial; the devotee’s vision is the total vision.

That is the meaning of abhinivesh. Attain to this vision, start looking at life with worshipping eyes –

and you will be surprised that that capacity exists in you. You have not used it yet; nobody has told you to use it.

It happens many times that we have a certain thing there already, but if nobody tells you you will not become aware of it. By becoming a sannyasin you are simply saying to me, ’Now if you tell me something, I am going to follow it’. That’s the meaning of sannyas.

This is what I see – that you can become a devotee. You may not have ever thought about it, it may not have even dawned in your dreams – but start, and you will see it growing. And once it starts growing it is such a joy that nothing else is comparable to it.

A devotee forgets about everything else. He says, ’Everything is so divine, nothing else is needed’.

He is moving from one temple to another, from one god to another god. His whole life is worship, his work is worship... he lives in the atmosphere of worship. Create it!

[A sannyasin says: I just want you to see my heart.]

This is right. The real thing cannot be said. The real thing is not a thought; that’s why it cannot be said. The real thing is inexpressible by its very nature. And you are right: it is there in the heart.

Only the heart counts, only the heart has any value.

[A sannyasin says she’s always hard on herself, always fighting with herself, and she’s sick of it.

She has a certain discipline – that she shouldn’t smoke, shouldn’t eat certain things, and when she goes against it she gets angry with herself, tries to rationalise away what she does. Really tired of it? chuckles Osho, Then drop it!]

... It will not become a discipline. If you drop it through understanding that it is meaningless, it does not create another discipline. If you force it, if you force it out by creating another discipline, then the other becomes the discipline. If through seeing its stupidity you simply drop it, it does not create another discipline. The difference between these two is tremendous.

If you see that the patterns you have lived in up to now are simply confining – they are not liberating and they have made you hard towards yourself.... If you are hard towards yourself you will be hard towards other people too. That’s the natural consequence of being hard towards oneself. You will be harder towards others than you are towards yourself; it is the natural corollary.

If you are soft towards yourself, only then are you soft towards others.

If you love yourself

tremendously, only then do you love others tremendously. If you are too much of a disciplinarian, too much of a perfectionist, then you will always be expecting others also to be perfectionists: they should do this and should not do that.

Whatsoever your expectation is of yourself it is bound to be your expectation of others also, and if they fall below it a deep condemnation and judgement will be there. You will not be able to love human beings – you can only love saints... and they are not available. Then you cannot love anybody and you start living in a loveless world.

You cannot love yourself and you cannot love anybody else: you become more and more hard, you start becoming more and more steel-like.

Seeing this – that this is death, seeing this – that it is harmful to you, you can drop it. I’m not saying to practise dropping. If you practise, then the other thing becomes a discipline. I’m not saying to practise dropping; I’m saying to drop it suddenly. Be finished with it this very moment.

It will haunt you for a few days, it will come again and again in the mind, but say that you are finished.

Don’t create the new discipline; just go on saying to the old that you are finished, good-bye! You have nothing to do with it. And start relaxing, start loosening up.

Life is only when you are relaxed, when there is no should and no should-not, when the ’ought’

disappears, the prison disappears, when you start floating with things, when you accept limitations, when you accept imperfections, when you accept that life is like that.

There is only one golden rule – that there are no golden rules.

Once this becomes your

understanding.,. I’m not saying to create another pattern, a new structure around you; start living without a structure. Now you will have to watch because the mind is such that it can easily move to the other extreme.

For example: if you have been dieting, eating this, not eating that or not eating much, then one day seeing the futility of it you drop it, you will start eating too much. If you start eating too much, sooner or later you will fall back to the old pattern again, because when you eat too much you will start feeling fat; you will start feeling a stomach trouble and this and that. Then you will say that the first discipline was far better.

So in fact if you start eating too much that means that the old discipline is creating this to bring you back home. It is a trap.

Mm? – if you have lived without smoking, with a very strict rule to never smoke, and then the next day thinking that now you have dropped it you start smoking the whole day, you become a chain smoker. You start coughing, the heart feels it and the lungs feel it. After two, three days, you feel tired of smoking and you say, ’It was better not to smoke’. This smoking too much is just a trick of the old mind. The mind says, ’So you want to drop the discipline? Now go and do the other and see what happens, and then you will choose me again.’

So if you really understand that the discipline is meaningless, don’t go to the other extreme; otherwise sooner or later you will be in the trap. There is nothing very much wrong; occasionally one smokes – there is nothing very much wrong. It is just innocent stupidity; that much I allow! It is just foolish, but one should not be wise twenty-four hours, mm? – that becomes heavy. Yes, once in a while it is okay.

And you are not harming anybody, just doing a innocent thing: taking smoke in and throwing it out, taking it in and throwing out. It is like a transcendental meditation. You are doing a japa with the smoke: in/out, in/out, in/out. Once in a while it is nothing to be worried about. One should be so relaxed in life.

If one day you eat too much, nothing wrong. The body is so adjustable that it can always allow a few holidays. Mm? – you go for a picnic and you eat too much: it is perfectly okay, but don’t make it a daily thing; then there is trouble.

One should live in such a relaxed freedom that occasionally everything is allowed – but nothing is made into a habit. This man I call a free man. A free man has no character; character is always binding. The good man’s character binds him and the bad man’s character also binds him. The really free man has no character – he is simple freedom: he lives moment to moment. He is responsible but he carries no rules and regulations; he depends on his consciousness.

So if your consciousness allows you some day – friends have come and the ice-cream is really so tasty – one can eat a little more; nothing is wrong. But this should not become a habit, then there is no need for dieting. But the mind is always happy moving from dieting to over-eating, then from over-eating to dieting; this way it goes on like a pendulum.

What I am suggesting is to let the pendulum hang just in the middle so the clock stops. Don’t go to the extreme; remain in the middle. Try it! It will be a great experience.

There are two types of people who miss life: one is the person who goes into indulgence too much and one is the person who goes into discipline too much. These are the two persons in this life. One misses by going to the left too much, one by going to the right too much.

The rich man, the really rich man – rich in the sense of being more conscious, more free, more alive

– is the man who always remains in the middle.

Have you ever seen how a tightrope walker walks? He keeps balance by continuously balancing himself. Sometimes he leans towards the right, just for a single moment, and then he leans towards the left immediately; then again to the right, then again to the left he goes on. He keeps a pole in his hand to keep balance. But he never leans too much to the right, otherwise he will fall, and never too much to the left, otherwise again he will fall.

The man of understanding is a tightrope walker. Great joy is there, great dance is there, but one should be in the middle, just in the middle. Just to keep in the middle sometimes you can lean left, right; that’s perfectly okay.

Try it, and from tomorrow you start living. Mm? but don’t go to the other extreme. Good.

CHAPTER 17

Allow nothing to happen

19 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Osho explains the meaning of deva vanya: a wild forest! Drop civilisation, drop culture, he says to her, and become more and more natural. That’s your religion... that has to be your religion.... ]

Start learning the language of nature again: talk to the trees and talk to the rivers and talk to the rocks. Start communing with nature... and that can be done in a thousand and one ways. Every moment there is a possibility to do it; one just has to be heartfully in it.

Just saying a hello to a tree is enough, but it should come from the heart. And sometimes even that is not needed, but just to stand by the side of the tree with closed eyes feeling the existence, the being of the tree. It has almost the same being as you have – a different form, but the essential is the same. Touching a rock you are touching a being.

Start opening these doors of perception.

Don’t remain confined to human beings; that’s an

unnecessary bondage. And the irony is that those who are not in tune with nature will not be in tune with man either. Those who are in tune with nature will be in tune with man too, because finally man is nothing but a fragment of nature, a kind of natural growth.

If you avoid nature, if you forget nature, if you are cut off from nature, if you are alienated from nature, naturally by and by you will be alienated from man himself and finally, ultimately, alienated from your own self. Mm? – that’s what has happened to the modern man: everybody has become a stranger in his own home!

This world is ours – it belongs to us and we belong to it – and we have become strangers. We don’t understand its language, we don’t understand its rhythm, we don’t understand its pulse. We have become minds too much.

By being natural I mean: start dropping out of the mind. Become more and more silent and more and more communicative in silence. Start growing into feelings, emotions, sentiments, sensitivities.

Yes, sometimes it is good to cry. When you see a rose flower it is good to cry out of joy, out of gratitude. It is good to sing a song or dance a dance, to give thanks to god that the rose exists and that you have been given an opportunity to see it, to dance around it and to have a little chit-chat with it.

[A sannyasin couple are leaving for the West. The man says: I see that the whole time I was here, I was waiting for something creative to come up, and nothing came.]

Then nothing is very creative!

It is really creative! I am trying to create nothing and you go on expecting something. Something will always be less than nothing, remember. How can something be more than nothing? You want to settle for very small, tiny things, but I will not allow you to settle for small things. Settle for the whole!

Nothing is the right thing to settle for; less than that will never be satisfying. But people are looking for something....

If they can paint a picture they think something creative has happened. Mm?even mad people do that perfectly well. Painting is not such a big thing; sometimes mad people do it far better! If someone puts a few words together and a poem comes up, they feel something great has happened. It is nothing: even computers will soon be writing poetry!

Don’t wait for something to happen; allow nothing to happen. Nothing is infinite! Something is bound to be finite, and anything finite will not satisfy you because your being is infinite: only the same can satisfy the same.

It is difficult, I understand, because there is a stigma in the western mind about nothingness: nothing carries a connotation of negativity.

In the East that is not the case. Nothing is the supermost, the highest good, the ’summum bonum’, god himself. Nirvana means nothing. We have put nothing at the highest.

When a person is ready to go with nothing, then it has happened. Then he will never be worried, he will never be in anguish, he will never be miserable. You cannot create any hell for him; it is finished, finished forever. The man who lives in nothing, in tune with nothing, has arrived! What can you do to disturb his nothing? You cannot take nothing away.

Something can be taken away – remember. If you have money the robbers can take it, or if robbers miss, the government will take it or the communists will be coming. Something will happen, something is bound to happen.

If you have prestige it can be destroyed very easily because it stands on the very flimsy world of public opinion. If you have political power you can fall into the dust any moment. In fact all those who have political power finally fall down; their own power becomes destructive to them.

It is always possible to lose something: you cannot lose nothing because you don’t have anything to lose. So the man who has nothing is the richest man. He is the emperor among emperors a king of kings.

And nothing is creative. Of course its creativity is not that of a painting or a poem or this and that.

Its creativity is such that each moment of your life becomes luminous. It creates you, it creates the man.... And then you love in a different way: you love creatively. Then you are angry in a different way: you are angry creatively.

Even if you go to sleep, you go to sleep in a different way: you go to sleep creatively. Your creativity surrounds you each moment; each step, each inch of your life becomes suffused with it. It creates you, it creates a buddha.

But I can understand: everybody is looking for something, and if that is not happening one starts feeling a little restless. Everybody is hoping for something... and my whole effort here is to destroy all hope, to snatch away everything that you can hope for, to take away all props that support your mind and keep it afloat, to take all the props away so that the mind falls and is destroyed, is shattered.

In that very moment – when the mind falls and is shattered – a great laughter arises in you. You will laugh your whole life. The laughter will never stop.

[The woman says: It feels like a coffee mill in my head with so many questions going around and around.

One question is: what is my investment in putting myself down and saying ’I don’t deserve things and I’m not equal, I’m not mature, I’m...’?]

These are the ways of the ego... these are very subtle and cunning ways of the ego. You want to be very perfect, the ego wants to be very perfect. Then the by-product is that whatsoever you are, you will feel that you are not up to the mark, that you are below the mark. You put the mark high, very high: you want to be at the top; then this is the by-product of that. You start feeling you are not mature enough – because you have a very very high ideal of maturity that you cannot fulfill. In fact you will never fulfill it; nobody has ever been that mature – then you start feeling bad....

And this is your investment: the investment is that you have a very subtle ego and the ego feels very good when you feel ’I am not mature’. Now this is a very tricky way. Ordinarily a man who is an egoist declares, ’I am the most perfect man’. Then it is very direct, gross; it is not very subtle. You are also declaring the same: you are declaring, ’I want to be the most perfect woman; in fact that is my potentiality. I will become it one day, but right now I am not, so I have to suffer and I have to really suffer so that I become perfect’. This is your investment.

You cannot drop it unless you bring down that high ideal. That’s what I mean by: ’When you see a buddha on your way, kill him’; this is what I mean. Kill him immediately, slay him! By buddha is meant all kinds of ideals.

Now you have impossible ideals in your mind – that you should be this and you should be that....

And you are not – nobody is for that matter – then you feel bad. When you feel bad you go on decorating the ideal more and more so that one day you will reach to the ideal and you will show the world who you are. You see the trip? This is your investment.

It is an ego-game on both the sides: first it makes a great ideal, then it feels bad. The ego creates ego-trips and then it feels miserable!

Drop the ego and the goal disappears and the misery too; they go together. It is one game: they are not separate.

And start living life as you are. What can you do? – if you are not mature, you are not mature. How is an immature person expected to suddenly be mature? How? It is just as if you are asking a small baby to become old! How can the baby become old?

Yes, you can create misery for him. He may pretend sometimes: he will sit in the chair and take a newspaper and start reading the newspaper as old people doubt that’s all he can do; he will remain a child. Sooner or later he will throw the newspaper and will run outside into the garden and do the things that he really wanted to do. How long will that maturity be there?

A child has to be a child. When you are a child, be a child so that when you become old you don’t repent that you didn’t enjoy your childhood! Otherwise this is what happens: when you are a child you want to be old; when you are old you would like to become a child again.

Mm? – that’s why so many poets all over the world in all the languages, go on singing songs about childhood. They have missed! Now they have become old and now they are thinking, ’What beautiful days those were – those days of childhood, that innocence, that freedom, that unworried state of mind, no responsibility.’ Now they are hankering for it; now it is a nostalgia.

When they were children they were thinking how to become grown-ups; now they are grown-ups they are thinking how to become children.

This is the moment: enjoy this ungrownupness, this immaturity, otherwise you will miss something.

Immaturity has its own beauties just as childhood has its own beauties. Maturity too has its own beauties just as old age has its own beauties, but there is no need to hanker for the other when you are are away from it.

While you are young, enjoy your youth with all its immaturities, with all its flaws. Enjoy it with all its limitations because youth is flying! Soon it will be gone and you will become mature and then there will be no way back. You will be caught in maturity and then you will suffer and say, ’Now I have become mature – I cannot fool around the way I used to like to.’ You would like to become immature again so you can forget all these things which wisdom brings.

While you are immature enjoy it; when you become mature enjoy that too. This is my philosophy: wherever you are at the moment, let that moment be your totality. Don’t create an ideal against it, above it, otherwise you start feeling that you are falling short.

All idealism is a kind of neurosis and all perfectionistic people tend to become mad. So drop this completely. Enjoy these foolish days; these are beautiful days! Soon they will be gone: before they are gone drink their juice to the utmost so there is no need to look back. When maturity comes enjoy that.

And then a man can enjoy the whole life from the beginning to the very end. He can enjoy childhood, he can enjoy youth, he can enjoy old age, he can enjoy success, he can enjoy failure; he can enjoy everything t:hat happens! He will enjoy life and he will enjoy death too. And when the whole life is just a continuity of enjoyment it is sacred! This life I call holy because it is whole!

CHAPTER 18

In the darkest night, search for and find a star

20 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Anand means bliss, mahamani means the cosmic mind – bliss mind. And all depends on the mind.

Ultimately all is our attitude. If we suffer, we suffer because of our wrong attitude, because of our wrong mind. Because we have created a mind which suffers, because we have cultivated a suffering mind, we suffer. If we create a bliss-mind, bliss follows. Ultimately everything can be reduced to your attitude, to your approach. The same thing can be a source of suffering or of bliss: it depends on how you interpret it.

So remember not to go on interpreting negatively; start interpreting positively. Even in the darkest night go on searching for and finding a star; it is always there. In fact millions of stars are there, and the darker the night, the more they are there, the more brilliant they are. Don’t look at the darkness, look at the stars, and then you will see the darkness is not against the stars. It gives a contrast; it is complementary. That’s why in the day you cannot see the stars: the day is against them. The night is not against them, the night is in total support. Death is in support of life.

So never look for the wrong; if you look it is there. If you look too much in darkness and look for the darkness, stars start disappearing, and then there is only darkness and gloom and suffering and hell – and you have created it!

If you look at the stars, by and by it is not only that you see the stars; by and by the meaning of the darkness is transformed too. You start looking at darkness as something beautiful, something that allows the stars to be. Then the darkness becomes the very mother of the stars.

And that life that can see darkness as the very mother of light, that consciousness that can see nothingness as the source of all, that can see the thorns as protection for the rose, is religious.

Then those thorns are just servants – serving the rose, helping the rose to be there; they are not against it, they are not enemies.

Once you start looking at the positive, all negativity disappears..The things are still the same but a new gestalt arises in the mind, a new pattern. That pattern is what religion is, and this is my message in your name.

[Osho explains the meaning of prem sambodhi – love enlightenment. Enlightenment is coming to a state where no darkness exists, when the dark night is over. And it is going to be through love, that light is going to happen through love. So be more loving, singing, dancing, chanting: these are helpful things on the path of love. Bring more and more love into your life, he says. Let that be your religion and enlightenment will follow. When love becomes very very dense, a light is created. So go on becoming more and more intense in love and you will see by and by that love itself starts becoming a light within you.]

Veerendra. It means divine courage. Deva means divine, veerendra means courage. And that’s exactly what is needed; for everybody it is needed. We all live like cowards. We have been brought up to live like cowards; we have been conditioned to be cowardly. We have been taught always to think first of security, safety, and only then to take any step. And the ultimate result is: we never take any step, we never move into any adventure... and god is the greatest adventure there is! Going to the moon is not so dangerous, going to everest is not such a problem, but going withinwards is.

That is where the unknown is not only the unknown but becomes the unknowable... and the mind simply feels tremendously frightened of the unknowable. It can deal with knowledge, with the known it is very very skilful. It can even deal with the unknown because the unknown can be transformed into the known any moment, but when it comes to deal with the unknowable the mind is utterly at a loss. Then it simply refuses to move a single inch: it says ’no’.

The first preference is for the known. If you insist and force it too much it can move towards the unknown, but to the unknowable it simply says an absolute’no’... and that’s where courage is needed. And unless we know the unknowable – which is a contradiction in terms but that is the only way to express it – when we come to know the unknowable, only then have we come to know ourselves... because our very being is made of the unknowable stuff: god itself.

So I would like to give you a special meditation that you can do before you come back again. This is a buddhist meditation; the method is to penetrate the unknowable. So each day, sit silently, close the doors, put off the phone, and tell everybody that for one hour you are dead to the world – whatsoever happens: even if the house catches fire you are not going to come out.

Take a shower, have loose clothes if it is too cold to have no clothes on, otherwise be naked, and sit down; this way will be perfectly good (he is sitting relaxedly with his legs crossed). If this feels a little strenuous and difficult then you can sit on a chair. To be comfortable is the point, so that you can remain in that posture for one hour at least.

Then close your eyes, relax the body, and start destroying your relationships. Think: if you are not the son of your father, then who are you? – disconnect it. This is part of your identity, that you are the son of a certain man; disconnect it.

Think: if you are not the husband of your wife, then who are you? – disconnect it. If you are not a father to your children, then who are you? – disconnect it. If you are not a friend to your acquaintances, then who are you? – disconnect it. If you are not the citizen of the united states, then who are you? – disconnect it. And go on disconnecting whatsoever you can find: all kinds of connections are there, all kinds of relationships are there. You belong to a certain church, you belong to a certain country, you belong to this, you belong to that club, you are a professor, you are a therapist, doctor, this and that; go on disconnecting.

For twenty minutes work hard to disconnect all relationship – you are left floating in the unknown

– and then ask ’who am l?’ Now those answers won’t do – that you are a son of a certain man or the husband or the father... your job, your education. We have disconnected them already... we are finished with them! Now there is no way to fall upon those relationships.

With those relationships has disappeared your so-called identity: the way you have come to know yourself, the way that you have become. Once that known is destroyed you are suddenly floating in an unknown ocean. Your mind will try to make this unknown ocean known again; it is still not the unknowable.

From the known you have moved to the unknown. Your mind says ’Yes, you are not this, you are not that – you are a soul, you are consciousness, you are awareness’, but these are again the trap of the mind. So forget all these things also, drop them! You don’t know.

Buddha says you are an awareness, but who knows? – he may be cheating. And these buddhas are not reliable people at all. Somebody has told you that you are a soul – you are not the body; but you don’t know that yourself. Unless you know it is not worth anything. Somebody has told you that you are an immortal soul and that when you die you will go to god, but this is all rubbish, told by others. It maybe so, it may not be so; you cannot be certain about it.... And if you cannot be certain about it, it has to be discarded.

We are in search of something indubitable, we are in search of something very foundational and essential which cannot be discarded by any effort. So first deny the known, then deny the unknown, and then you start entering into the emptiness of the unknown.

It will be frightening for a few days, it will be almost like a death – it is called in zen, ’the great death’

– but after a few days, if you go on gathering courage and entering it, within three, four weeks, one day it will suddenly be there. Suddenly all has disappeared; you are no more here. You are no more the same person: a new gestalt has arisen.

Nothing can be said about it; you will have to experience it. Only experience is the proof of it, and only by experience one knows it; there is no other way to know it. So continue this.

Even if for a few seconds that feeling of the unknowable arises, that will do... even if for a single moment in one hour’s time you enter into that world of nothingness, of nobodiness, of no-self, what zen people call anatta, non-ego. It is pure emptiness, no boundaries; the drop has simply disappeared into the ocean.

Sometimes it will be very hard in the beginning: you will start perspiring and your heart will palpitate and you will feel very uneasy and restless. Don’t be worried – within three weeks all that settles, and once it has settled things start becoming smooth and something starts flowering inside you.

And I can see, it is waiting there like a bud, ready to flower any moment. A little climate just has to be created for it. Mm? – now you have to be a very very careful gardener: this flower of being is ready to flower.... And courage will be needed, courage is the only need.

If you ask me the definition of a religious person, I don’t say that he has to be virtuous, no... not necessarily so. But I say that he has to be courageous, necessarily so. Courage is the greatest virtue and the basic virtue; all other virtues follow it: they come like shadows, as consequences.

So this will be your name: swami deva veerendra. Get in tune with it and forget the old. Mm? – it is finished!

Prem means love and prama means knowledge – love knowledge, knowledge that comes through love. There are a few kinds of knowledge: one knowledge that comes through intellect, head, logic, and another kind of knowledge that comes through loving, through feeling, through the heart.

The second kind of knowledge is the real knowledge; the first kind is only called so; it is not real knowledge. It is very very indirect, it goes about and about: it never goes directly to the heart of the thing. It is not immediate... it is from the outside.

You can study a man from the outside, you can study everything about the man from the outside –

his height, his weight, his heartbeat, cardiograph, pulse, blood, urine – you can examine everything but still you will be missing the real man.

If you fall in love with this man you will not know what his cardiograph is, what his pulse rate is, you will not know his chemistry and physiology – but you will know him. Love simply goes direct into the being of the man... and you will come to know him in a totally different way. Mm? – that is the way a mother knows a child, a lover knows a beloved, a friend knows a friend.

The same kind of knowledge is possible with existence itself. That’s what prayer is: it is an effort to know existence through love....

[A sannyasin returning to the West says she’s excited about it, and scared too.... ]

Both are good! Excitement always brings the other thing also. Excitement also brings a certain kind of fear in the wake of it. That’s why people don’t get too excited; they pull it down, they repress it. It brings all kinds of emotions. With excitement you will feel more sensuous, more sexual, more fearful, more loving, more angry, everything!

Excitement suddenly brings energy to all kinds of emotions. It is like a flood; it makes you alive.

Hence people love to be excited and are always afraid too, so they only go in little doses: they only go so far and then they stop. But excitement is life. That is the only difference between a dead body and an alive man: the alive man can get excited and the dead man cannot, that’s the only difference.

Excitement is the very nature of life. One has to learn how to be excited and yet remain harmonious, silent, at ease, at rest. Excited and yet at rest: that is the highest harmony that has to be achieved.

But it cannot be achieved by destroying excitement; that’s what people have done. They try to remain at ease, and their method is to destroy excitement. Then you are at ease – but you are dead too!

So I am all for excitement and yet I will insist that one go on remaining silent at the same time. There is excitement all around; and at the centre, at the centre of the cyclone, everything is calm and quiet and collected and nothing disturbs it. When this silence goes together with all the sound and the fury and the noise and the dance of excitement, when they are together, balancing each other, then there is beauty. It is beatific.

So don’t stop the excitement: let it go, let it go to the very end. Let it be to the very excess, yet remain more and more alert, see what is happening; watch it as if you are standing outside it. That is the very meaning of the word ’excite’: it means it is outside you. It is not inside you, it cannot be; the innermost core is never involved.

A zen master was passing across a river, a small river, and his disciple was asking a few questions.

When they were crossing the river the disciple asked a question, saying ’Master, what is the way to cross the river?’

And the master said ’Cross it in such a way that the water does not touch your feet’.

The disciple was very surprised because he looked down and even the master’s feet were wet! So he said ’Sir, excuse me, but I see that even your feet are wet.’

And the master said ’I am not: it is only on the surface. Deep inside I am as dry as ever; the water has not touched me.’

Now, there are two ways to remain untouched by the water: one is, never to enter into any river –

but that will be suicidal because the whole life is the river; then you are hung-up on the bank. That’s what happens to your so-called saints in the monasteries and to monks and people – catholics and hindus and jainas. They are just dead, just hanging on the bank, always afraid that if they get into the river they will get wet. That is not the way... that is what is called ’throwing the baby out with the bathwater’. You have thrown your life also just because of the fear that you will get wet.

Get into the river, go in as deep as possible, and become a lotus. Cross all kinds of rivers and enjoy all kinds of experiences. East and west, here and there and everywhere, meet all kinds of people, fall in all kinds of love, enter all kinds of madnesses, have. a taste of everything that is available in life... and yet remain a lotus. Be watchful so that inside remains always alone, far away, a watcher on the hills. It will happen; it will start happening by and by....

CHAPTER 19

The courage of a madman is needed

21 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

... Let the past be dropped as if it were part of a dream, as if it belonged to somebody else, as if you had seen it in a movie that you were just a witness to and not a participant in – just a watcher, a spectator, standing aloof.

That is the best way to drop all the burden that the past naturally creates. There is no need to fight with it. In fighting it you remain attached to it; in fighting it you remain obsessed with it; in fighting, it remains. At the most you can press it back into your unconscious, but it will be there. It will move into the underground of your being, will become part of your basement but will go on affecting your life from there. So the best way is never to fight. To fight means one is ready to get defeated; it is self-defeating. The best way to win is not to fight. Just drop it! Just have the awareness that you are a watcher... and that’s how it is!

Whatsoever has happened to you in your life and whatsoever you have done, deep down your inner being has been just a witness to it; it has never been a doer. It is always transcendental. When you are angry, it is standing far away and looking at your anger. When you are cleaning the floor, it is standing far away and looking at you cleaning the floor. You are young and it is looking, you become old and it is looking; you are happy it is looking, you are unhappy it is looking. It is always just there, standing by the side; it never gets involved. It remains pure and untouched by all experience whatsoever: neither good makes it good, nor bad makes it bad.

That purity, that innocence, is always there. It is ours to claim: it has just to be recognised. So with the new name forget the old and drop the past.

... Prabhu means god and praveeta means pregnant – pregnant with god. And you are pregnant with god; that has been your search for many lives. You have been groping in the dark but the search has been there. And unless god is born in you, you will never feel contented, you will never feel satisfied. Nothing less than god will help, nothing less will do... and that can happen!

That is the easiest thing in the world to happen because it is our innermost nature. We are made in the image of god, we carry the seed inside: it just needs right soil, right nurturing, right nursing, and it will sprout. That’s what I mean by pregnant. Everybody is pregnant with god but very few people are fortunate enough to give birth.

You can become one of those fortunate ones. Just trust and courage – almost the courage of a madman – is needed. The courage of a fool is needed because it is such an impossible adventure that clever people cannot go into it; their very cleverness prevents them. Calculating people cannot have any god; their very calculation is against them.

Only people who are innocent childlike, in a way primitive, mad, can take the jump – because they can trust that the impossible is also possible.

The moment you believe that the impossible is possible it becomes possible – because it is all our belief. As a man thinketh, so he becomes. It is all our idea: if we think we are unhappy, we are unhappy; if we think we are not unhappy, we are not unhappy. It is just that we go on creating a certain vibe around ourselves by thinking it continuously. If somebody lives in misery it is his own fiction.

It is just like people who go to the movie to see a horrible film: they know it is horrible but they want to see it. And they suffer in the film; they go through all kinds of torture because they become identified. Still they pay and go; they pay for it! They know it is just a film, and it is horrible, but they want to see it.

It is exactly the same case in life: there are people who want to remain in misery; that is their decision. There are people who don’t want to remain in misery; that is their decision. And you choose your life; it is all your choice. The moment you want to change, you can change it – just like that.

So let this sannyas be a radical change in your pattern of life. From this moment think of god, from this moment look for god, from this moment whatsoever you see, try to find god in it. It may be a rock, but god is rock in a rock. It may be a tree, but god is tree in a tree. It may be a child giggling, but god is child in a child, god is giggling in giggling.

Go on looking for god. By and by you will see that this whole universe is his temple and we are not to go somewhere else to find him. He is here, he has always been here... just a recognition was missing.

[The new sannyasin asks about returning to the West to finish a book she is writing about Francis Bacon: It’s a historical study about what historians can do to the reputation of a man who was loved in his time.

Mm... good! Bacon is one of the most important persons to think about. Good! – go and finish it.

CHAPTER 20

Become an instrument to me

22 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin who is leaving for the west says he has a hard time accepting everything about himself and finds it particularly tricky relating to people – especially to strangers and to groups of people: I don’t know whether to just accept it, or to try and do something about it... ]

Accepting it is doing something about it. Acceptance is not mere acceptance: it is the very method of changing it. The moment you accept anything, it starts coming into the conscious. It leaves the unconscious, it starts coming to the light because now you are not denying it so there is no need for it to hide. Now you are not against it and there is no need to go on living underground: it can come and face you.

And when things come to the conscious and you see them clearly.... And they can be seen clearly only when you accept. If somewhere you have any kind of denial, rejection, you cannot look into the eyes of a thing. You avoid, you don’t want to see; you’re afraid.

Acceptance makes you unafraid of any fact – if it is there. the moment you see that it is there and you are no more repressing, it comes up, it surfaces; it comes into the light. You can see it through and through and that very seeing is a transforming phenomenon. You will never be the same again once you have seen the facts about yourself in their utter nakedness.

That’s what the whole method of psychoanalysis is. It tries to analyse your dreams, because dreams come from the unconscious. Dreaming is nothing but an effort of the unconscious to bring a few facts about you to your conscious, but you are so much against them that it cannot bring them directly. It brings them through a myth, the myth of the dream. It brings them in a poetic form so you cannot immediately reject them. By the time you see what they are you would have faced them already.

[For example, Osho continues, when you are a child you might think of killing your father, because it is the father who doesn’t allow you freedom, who is continually enforcing discipline on you!. You resent the father but you can’t do anything about it, and the very idea makes you feel so guilty that you repress it. Later on, when you are older, a situation may arise where you are in conflict with a father-figure – perhaps the boss in your office. Again the idea to kill your father might arise, again you repress it. Then you dream that you kill the uncle; that is safer. The uncle resembles your father but is not, so it is more acceptable to you.]

This was a message garbed, coded, masked, to tell you that now it is time to get rid of father-figures.

You need not be afraid of the boss, you need not be afraid even of god – because god is again the projection of the father-figure, the ultimate projection, the father of all. You need not be afraid: now you are mature enough, you can get rid of these things. That’s what the unconscious wants to relate to you: to drop this garbage now. But it will come in a story-form and you will have to analyse it. You may not be able to; you may have to go to some expert who will analyse it.

The whole psychoanalysis is simply this: decoding your dreams that the unconscious can clearly give you the message. If you don’t repress the unconscious, if you accept you yourself, there is no need for psychoanalysis at all. A man who accepts himself totally need not be psychoanalysed; there is nothing to analyse! His unconscious will not garb his messages. He will get direct messages, and direct messages are very beautiful; they immediately bring about a transformation in you.

So the first thing is to accept. Through acceptance you don’t need any Freud, any Jung: you yourself become your own psychoanalyst. In fact, psychoanalysis is not needed; things become very simple. No expert is needed, no expertise is needed. The unconscious reveals itself... and when the unconscious reveals itself, naturally, it is unburdened.

And many things, almost ninety percent of the garbage, are there because you repress. When it comes to light you see the futility of it, and rather than repressing it you simply throw it out. That is the whole effort of groups like encounter: you throw it, you don’t put it back inside.

If you are really angry at your father, then you write ’father’ on the pillow and you beat the pillow; you are nasty to it, you kill it. Act it out – and suddenly you will feel a great relief. Something was boiling: it has been thrown out. You will feel clean as one feels after vomiting: relaxed, the strain gone, the nausea disappears.

Yes, exactly, that’s what encounter and groups like that are – an effort to vomit the emotions. So first accept, then no need for psychoanalysis; if you deeply accept then no need for encounters. Then you yourself become capable of throwing whatsoever is useless. There is no need to put it back –

it is not worth saving and why waste space for it? Have a cleaner space inside. Why carry rubbish and junk?

So ninety percent can be thrown just like that – as every morning you throw all that is garbage into the garbage bin. The ten percent that remains is very significant. It is not to be thrown; it is your own nature telling you to do a few things that you have never done. But before the garbage is thrown you will never be able to sort it out – what is essential and what is non-essential and what is significant and what is insignificant.

For example, you feel afraid of relationship, you feel afraid of people, you feel afraid of strangers.

Mm? – that’s a message from the unconscious that from your very childhood you have never allowed any deep involvement with people. You have never really loved somebody. Maybe you loved so-so but you were never so involved as if it were a life and death problem. No, you never put yourself totally at the stake.

So by and by you have become a little alienated, you have become a little lonely. The bridges are broken: now you don’t know how to relate to strangers. And because you cannot relate with a stranger, to be with a stranger feels embarrassing. Something has to be said, some relationship has to be made, otherwise you feel restless; one feels something has to be done!

Another human being is there sitting in front of you and you can’t even say ’hello’. You will feel embarrassed, he will feel embarrassed, and his embarrassment will make you feel even more embarrassed. The more embarrassed you are, the more nervousness will arise, and you will start trembling, shaking, and then it is even more difficult to say hello. Your throat is dry, you cannot open your mouth. Even if you want to talk, suddenly no word seems to be available, the mind simply goes blank; hence the fear!

So my suggestion is: there is no need to start with strangers, but love your friends a little more, put a little more energy into that love. If you can love your friends, one day you will understand a miracle.

The miracle is: if you love your friend deeply you come to know that he is your friend and yet he is a stranger. Human beings are such mysteries. We only pretend that we know each other; in fact, there is no way to know each other. All our knowledge is just on the surface. It never goes to the heart of the other person.

When you love a friend deeply you will become aware that you love him so much but still he is a stranger. You have loved him so much but that has not made him known to you. In fact that has made him even more unknown – even unknowable. His mystery has grown dense, his mystery has become deeper.

So if you love a friend you will find finally that he is a stranger... and that very day, when you look at a stranger you will find he is a friend too. That is the miracle I am talking about. If you can find the stranger in the friend, you will find the friend in the stranger; then those two things are not separate.

You follow me? Those two things are two aspects of the same coin.

Each friend is a stranger and each stranger is a potential friend... and there is no antagonism. By friendship the stranger is not destroyed: the stranger remains a stranger. And by being a stranger he is not your enemy; he is just a potential friend – you can befriend him. He is as ready as anything, he is waiting as much as you are. He is as much embarrassed as you are because a bridge is not being created; he is as nervous as you are.

When you know yourself rightly, you know everybody because they are all alike. Even the very very powerful people are as nervous as the powerless people, even your great leaders are as nervous.

They simply go on putting on airs, deep down there is the same human being... fragile.

Just the other day I was reading about a zen master who was a master to a chinese Emperor. It happened that the Emperor was defeated and had to escape into the mountains; he took the master with him. The master was surprised because this man was absolutely a different man, he was no more an emperor; all that he was putting on disappeared. He had never seen the Emperor walking, and he saw him running – just like an ordinary man! They were travelling miles every day, and running!

The Emperor felt very hungry, and the master was surprised because that was one of the problems of the Emperor – that he has lost his appetite; all emperors lose their appetites. Now after running for miles, by the evening when they reached a small village he was so hungry that he said, ’Master, find something, anything will do; I am so hungry!’ They could not find anything: it was such a small, poor village, that only sweet potatoes were available. In china, sweet potato is not thought to be human food; it is given only to pigs. And that was the only thing available; one poor man offered some.

The Emperor ate them and he liked the sweet potatoes so much that he said, ’I have never eaten anything so delicious!’ He ate like an ordinary labourer, with his hands – no golden spoons, nothing and he slept a very sound sleep. That was another problem: he was suffering from insomnia for years. Mm? – that’s also part of being an emperor. The appetite always goes when you are rich, sleep goes when you are rich. These two things god allows only to poor people!

He slept... he snored! The master was awakened two, three, times in the night because he was snoring so much! He had never heard him snore, mm? – people like emperors don’t snore! Even in their sleep, if they sleep at all, they follow a certain etiquette, they remain appropriate.

Now this was too much – snoring like a labourer, a farmer, a fisherman – and in the morning the master said to the Emperor ’What were you doing? You snored!’

The Emperor said, ’Forget all about it! I am feeling so happy, I have never felt so happy in my whole life. It is good that the kingdom is lost. I have become alive!’

After one week of running towards the mountains, all airs, all that pretension, all that pseudo-personality disappeared, and the Emperor was just as a human being – as any other. Even the master started forgetting that he was the Emperor.

After two, three weeks, things changed: the enemies left, the Emperor came back, and within a single moment – as he entered the capital and was received with a golden chariot – all those airs were there again. The master could see that he was a totally different man! Suddenly everything changed, and next day the Emperor was suffering from loss of appetite and after two, three days he was saying that sleep did not come.

And the master said, ’But now you know! Don’t ask me and don’t bother me about this nonsense!

Now you know all this can be changed.’

The Emperor said, ’That almost seems like a dream that we had; it is not possible. Now I am an emperor.’

Remember: each human being – maybe the human being is Alexander the Great or just a beggar on the roadside – each human being is as fragile as anybody else. Deep down he is the same – the same consciousness, the same fear, the same death, the same lust, the same love: all exists the same.

So don’t be worried about that. Accept yourself, allow your unconscious to be revealed to you.

This is how each human being is. By knowing it, you become a separate kind of human being. By accepting it, cherishing it, you bring a revolution to your life. And when you look at others with that understanding, you will not find strangers; you will find all are friends.

Everybody is looking for a friend. Everybody is hiding behind a wall and waiting for somebody to say

’hello’, somebody to say, ’Why are you there? Come out! I am waiting for you!’... somebody to hold hands with. Everybody is waiting for that – somebody to hug, somebody to love and be loved by....

There is nobody who is in any way different from you. Once you understand yourself you have understood the whole humanity. In that very understanding a great vision arises in which we are all brothers and sisters and we are all in the same boat. Then fear disappears; there is nobody to be afraid of. Nervousness disappears; what is there to be nervous about? We are all in the same boat.

So this is what I mean by acceptance. Acceptance is not just acceptance: it is a way of changing the whole situation. Accept it, allow it, and you will see many things are useless, just hang-ups from the past; they can be thrown easily. Just by seeing them – that they are hang-ups from the past –

you get rid of them. Nothing else is needed in just seeing that.

And the remaining are messages of tremendous import from your deepest core, from your navel to the head – which has gone very very far away. Those messages are very significant; they have to be understood. By understanding them you will be creating a bridge between your unconscious and conscious. By understanding them you will become more one, more individual. The division, the split will disappear. You will start feeling a new centre arising in you – the centre which is called integration.

And neither a psychotherapist is needed for it nor does one really need to go to encounter groups.

If you can do it yourself it is simple. When you cannot do it yourself, then I say, ’Yes, take the help of somebody who knows better’. Otherwise it is simple – you can do it... and start doing it!

[A sannyasin who practises Postural Integration in the ashram says that he his work has become mechanical and he feels stuck: When my heart is into it, when it’s fresh, I get a lot of energy out of it and I feel really good, but when it’s not I get really drained.]

There are a few problems, mm?

One is, that you have to be a little more inventive about it; there is no need to follow a very very rigid pattern. You can make it a little loose and you can put a few changes here and there, and in fact it will be helpful to because each person is such a different person that no structure fits all people.

So this is my first feeling – that sometimes when your structure fits with the people you start flowing; when it doesn’t fit you start feeling stuck. You could not flow with [your girlfriend] at all, not at all: your energy and her energy are totally different. That’s what I wanted to see.

So when the person you are working on flows.... Your understanding is just the other way round: you think that because your heart is in it he is flowing. Just the other way is true: because he flows your heart gets into it.

And any rigid structure will not allow all persons to flow into it. You have to be a little more inventive, you have to be a Little more intuitive, because rigid structures come from the head, liquid structures come from the heart. You have to see the person, you have to feel the person!

Sometimes just let the person lie down there, close your eyes; just feel the person all over the body.

Just go feeling, groping in the dark, just touching the body here and there. Have a feel of the person, and out of that feel let the structure grow. Whatsoever you know will be used; it will only be a difference of arrangement. All techniques that you use will be used, but sometimes putting a thing here and putting a thing there and changing the arrangement can make such a lot of difference.

And be a little inventive too. No technique is complete and no technique will ever be complete.

When man is growing, techniques have to go on growing. When man has not finished yet how can techniques be finished? So be a little more intuitive, more fluid, and let there be more play.

In zen, they say that if you want to become a real painter, for twelve years learn painting then for twelve years forget all about it. Throw the canvas, throw the brush, throw the colours and forget all about painting. For twelve years do something else – gardening, farming, anything will do – and after twelve years start painting again. And then there will be something original... because when you don’t know the technique you may be original but you will be amateurish and your art cannot be very valuable; it will be childish, juvenile.

When you only know the technique your art will have the technical quality in it but it will not have the genuineness of the heart. The technique has to be known and then forgotten so the technique enters in your bloodstream – it becomes part of you; you don’t know what it is.

Now you are again like a child with all the know-how; you are again like a child. First you learn, then you unlearn. Now you are again like a child but not really a child; you have all the expertise hidden in your bones. It will work but it will not work any more like a technology. It will not dominate you, it will not be predominant, it will not be dictatorial. It will simply serve you, and it will serve in a very unconscious way... and then original things are born.

So everything has to be learned and then forgotten, unlearned. Then one is innocent and yet technically correct; that is the right process.

Start being a little more inventive, intuitive, liquid... go by the feeling. Mm? – you are too much in the technique and you just follow a rigid pattern. Sometimes it fits; when it fits you feel very happy. Naturally, when the patient starts getting well the doctor feels happy. When the students start learning, the teacher feels happy. When the trees start flowering the gardener feels happy...

naturally.

When you see some human being flowing, mm? you start flowing. Your work is bringing fruit, your work is meaningful, it has certain significance. You feel fulfilled: so you are not working in vain, you are not just wasting your energy.

Become more innovative... one thing.

And the second thing: your own love is not flowing very deeply so if you can find a woman to flow with that will help... that will help tremendously. Otherwise you will feel that all work by and by becomes a drag. You are not yet capable of being flowing without love. One day you may be but right now love is almost like food.

Mm? if you don’t get food for a few days, then it will be difficult to do your postural integration.

And that’s what is happening: you are not getting love and you are not sharing love. Something is missing in your heart; that’s why the heart does not flow.

It happens to people: when their love is not flowing their work is not flowing. When their love is flowing their work also flows. So the second thing: fall into love... fall into love like a fool. Don’t be worried; go into it!

And the third thing: start becoming more like an instrument to me rather than doing things on your own – and that will help tremendously. Before you start your work on somebody, just close your eyes, remember me. Repeat ’Osho, Osho, Osho...’ three times, loudly, and tell your patient also to repeat that. Then start working; leave it to me.

Become instrumental, become a vehicle, just a passage, and there will be more enjoyment and there will be more flow. There will be new sources of energies flowing in you; that is the way to tap the infinite source.

Man always feels exhausted after a time, becomes tired; work becomes repetitive. Of course for three and a half years you have been doing the same work; it is natural. Let god do it now.

These three things, mm? And after one month report to me.

[The sannyasin says he has been in a relationship with his girlfriend for four months: so you kind of blew my mind when you said that my energy wasn’t with her.]

It is not! It is not... and that may be the reason why it is not. If you are with a woman long enough you are not in any poetic relationship any more. Things have settled: you have become a husband and a wife.

That’s what happens, and here it happens within three days, four days... not more than that. Within seven days divorce comes, and that too in very orthodox people, very conventional people. They stay together for at least seven days; otherwise in one day also, love is there and it is gone.

That may be the reason why you could not flow with her energy. It is very difficult to flow with the energy you have been with, with the woman you have been with – very difficult. It is very difficult to turn on to the wife or the husband... very difficult. Any other woman may do it very easily, any other man will do it very easily: the new provokes excitement. Maybe just because you are acquainted with each other’s energy, that’s why it.... You should have told me before!

But do these three things and then you tell me, mm? Good!

[The girlfriend then says their relationship has been really beautiful: I do feel there are places where our energies don’t meet. We didn’t fall headlong in love with each other but what’s been growing between us has been really beautiful, so.... ]

Mm mm, go into it! Sometimes your energies may not go together and yet you can be in love. You cannot be in love headlong, that’s true.

... When you fall headlong in love with somebody it will be finished soon. It will be too romantic and romance does not last. When you fall in love with somebody not headlong, not madly, the romance is not there; it is more on the earth, it is more down-to-earth, more practical. It can last long; it can become a very very stable thing.

That’s why in the East we completely cut the idea of love. For many centuries in the East love was not necessary; in fact, it was avoided. Persons should get married and then they should love – not love first and then marriage. If love is there first, then marriage cannot last long; that is the trouble with love. It goes so high and you cannot remain on that height for long – sooner or later you fall flat on the ground.

Mm? – that is the misery in America: a love marriage cannot succeed. A love marriage is beautiful

– it really takes people on a trip – but it cannot succeed, mm? It cannot become an institution, it cannot create a family; the family will always be on the rocks.

This is the human dilemma: marriage succeeds, marriage is practical, mm?

mathematical,

calculated – it succeeds. It is good for a family, for children, for society, for the state, it is good, but for those two persons it never goes to the stars. It is simply moving on the ground – good; it is what is called happy marriage.

Mm? a happy marriage is not a very happy affair. A happy marriage means that things are going well, things are okay... but for things to be just okay is not enough. It is lukewarm, comfortable, convenient, but it never drives you mad!

That may be the reason. You can stay together and it may become a good, happy marriage....

And I’m not saying drop out of it, no!

Once you know that your energies are not meeting something can be done to help them meet. That is not a problem: it is not such a thing that nothing can be done about it. If you don’t know, then nothing can be done about it. It is good: by accident you have come to know that your energies are not meeting. Now much can be done and you can make them meet.

But you will have to be into it more consciously; they will not meet on their own accord. You will have to move towards him a little and he will have to move towards you a little and you will have to meet.

You will have to make a little effort – but good! I am not against it and I am not saying to drop out of it.

Give it a try for one month more but for this one month try more consciously. For example dance together, sing together; do many other things together. Massage him, he can massage you, mm?

Let your energies meet and mingle not only sexually – in other ways too! Massage is perfectly good, dancing is good; go swimming together, hold your hands in the water, take a sunbath together. Let your energies meet in many other ways. Sex is okay, but let it be multi-dimensional.

And when you know that, your energies are not meeting then you can do something consciously to create a situation so that they start moving. And when you know that they are not meeting you can avoid many situations of conflict, nagging, fighting... because that won’t be good for you.

When energies are not meeting fighting is very bad. When energies are meeting very much fight is okay, it can be allowed because the affair can afford it. If you start fighting there is nothing much to hold you together, nothing is at stake; you will say good-bye. Knowing this, you can create a situation.

So avoid all negativities. I never say to avoid negativities when people are in a romantic love – I say go into them: be angry, fight, throw pillows at each other and do all kinds of things. But when energies are not meeting, then you have to be very very alert: the negative cannot be allowed. Do more positive things so that you start coming closer to one vibe.

And just sex won’t do. You will have to make other non-sexual approaches, then in the sex also it will happen; otherwise just sex won’t do. But one thing is good about it – it can be stable... and I think you need something stable. Mm? – you have been in many affairs: now you need something stable too.

CHAPTER 21

People who are full of wonder are people of god

23 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A sannyasin is returning to the west. Osho gives him a box, saying that whenever he needs him, he should hold the box in his hands, close his eyes and feel Osho. Don’t remember me, Osho reiterates, feel me.... ]

Remembrance is just memory. Live it rather than remember it. For example, just this moment, close your eyes and have the feel here. Mm? – the birds, the air, the silence, my presence. Feel it for three minutes... Let the whole envelope you...

So just create this atmosphere. Any moment that you need me just hold the box in your hands, close your eyes: relive this moment. And at least every night before you go to sleep, relive this moment in your bed and fall asleep so when you are moving into sleep, you are moving into your sleep with me. And that helps, that helps tremendously – because when you are very very deeply asleep many many things are possible in that moment.

When you are full of thought you are far away from me. The distance has nothing to do with space; the distance has something to do with too many layers of thought. You can be ten thousand miles away but if there is no thought between me and you, you are just in front of me. You can be here, and if there are many mountains of thought between me and you, you are far away.

So when you are awake and so many thoughts and the mind noise and the ordinary traffic of inside goes on, it is difficult to make a contact. When you are going to sleep and thoughts are disappearing and by and by silence is settling and you are relaxing, you are getting ready to go into rest, then there is more possibility.

And if you go on remembering me while falling asleep there is a certain moment when the gear changes, when you are no more awake and you have fallen asleep. If in that moment of gear change the remembrance remains, then that thought pulses through you the whole night. It hovers around you, it lives in you. Your dreams will be saturated with it and when you are without dreams your sleep will be saturated with it.

The last thought in the night is always the first thought in the morning – always; it stands there, it remains there the whole night. You can observe it: you can just note what the last thought in the night is and then early in the morning recall it. You will see that the first thing that happens in your mind is the last thought – that with which you had said good-bye to the mind. It has been there, it is waiting for you. You fell asleep and the guest was waiting for the host to come back.

So fall asleep remembering, reliving me, and that will be of much help. Continue to meditate and come as soon as possible, mm? I will be waiting!

[A nine-year-old sannyasin asks: What’s enlightenment?]

Mm! you want to become enlightened? (he nods) I will make you and then you will know what it is, mm? It is easier to become it than to talk about it. It is difficult to say what it is.

It is like a taste: if you taste something you know what it is but you cannot explain it to anybody else.

At the most you can say good, bad, but that doesn’t explain anything, mm? If somebody asks you

’What is the taste of this chocolate you are eating?’ how will you explain it? The only thing possible is that you can give the chocolate to the person, mm? and say, ’You eat also.’

That’s what I can do, mm? It is a chocolate – enlightenment! It tastes good! I will give it to you.

Very good! Start meditating: you can go to all meditations and meditate, Very good!

[Another sannyasin says: I don’t know about me.]

So nothing to be worried about! There is in fact no need to know anything, mm? Not knowing is not a bad state; you are not in a bad shape by not knowing. People are in a bad state because they know too much about themselves. There is no need really to know.

You are! And this – your being – cannot be made an object of knowledge. You are always the knower; you never become the known. You cannot be reduced to an object; you are not a thing! So the more you know about yourself, the more you will come to feel that you are unknowable. Finally, only mystery is left there, nothing else. Finally one is there, one has come home, but one knows not a thing. Knowledge is not something very important; this state of not knowing is very potent.

Nothing to be worried about! I am taking all your knowledge away from you. I would like to make everybody here a non-knower. And remember, non-knowledge is not ignorance; there is a difference

– these are three separate things.

Knowledge is the presence of information, ignorance is the absence of information, and non-knowing is neither presence nor absence: it is beyond both. The non-knower is neither knowledgeable nor ignorant. He has dropped all knowledge but he does not suffer from lack of knowledge. He enjoys his not-knowing, he is tremendously happy with his not-knowing. That’s where you are getting confused....

Because of this non-knowing you start feeling as if you are ignorant; that is not the thing. Non-knowledge looks like ignorance; it is not. Just get deeper into this not-knowing, move deeper into this mystery. This is you! And there is no way to know it. Nobody has ever known it and nobody can ever know it because that one who knows always remains the knower and cannot be converted into the known. This is impossible to do.

So relax into it, abide in it, rest in it and enjoy it! With non-knowing all life becomes wonderful; with knowledge wonder disappears. When you know too much you lose surprise, you are not surprised when you know too much: you know everything. Then nothing seems like a mystery and nothing is miraculous.

When you don’t know a thing everything is mysterious: the green trees, the red flowers, the birds in the sky and the clouds. Everything is mysterious and everything is so mysterious that you are surrounded by mystery continuously and each move is mysterious. One is simply surprised at how life goes on, how one goes on breathing. Even that is a surprise! One is constantly full of wonder and that feeling of wonder is really the feeling of god.

People who are full of wonder are people of god. They are the chosen people.

So don’t be worried about this non-knowledge. It is not ignorance: it is opening the door of wonder to you.

What are you doing?

[She answers: Cleaning.]

Very good! That is the best thing one can do! That’s very good – that’s all I do: cleaning! All kinds of rubbish I go on cleaning. Very good, Good!

[A sannyasin who practises massage in the ashram says she has reached a stasis in her work: I don’t get high from it any more and I don’t get upset by it any more. It’s just as if it’s really in between, and I’ve never experienced anything like that before.

I’m thinking maybe it’s the time to stop... or it’s the time to start. I don’t know!]

No, this is the time to start, mm? because high and low are momentary things and this will become a permanent thing. This is more right, more balanced. A high is an imbalance and a low is also another kind of imbalance, and one goes on moving like a pendulum – from high to low, from low to high; that is not a very restful state. There is excitement but there is no rest, and finally one gets tired of it.

This is far better. This is more calm, more silent, more tranquil; this is equilibrium. Equilibrium means exactly that: everything is equal. If this happens, good; if that happens, good. If things go right, good; if they don’t go right, that too is good. This is not a bad state – this is very healthy and whole, so no need to be worried.

This is the time now when you start your massage in a better situation. And you will be of great help, because when you are very high you can excite the person but you will not help him to fall into rest

– and the deepest massage is to help him to relax, to fall into rest. If you are excited you will excite him: one person very much stirred, naturally stirs the other. We are so much joined with each other that if you are too much excited, excitement is catching, infectious.

And if you are massaging with excitement you are throwing great energy into the other man. He will become excited: he will feel very good, but that was not really the point of massage. The very innermost core of massage is to help him to come to equilibrium so he feels completely at ease, silent, peaceful, unmoving. To bring the man to that rest is the highest goal of massage.

In the west that is completely lost. In the west massage has become just a kind of excitement, and hence, naturally, it has fallen even more. It has become sexual because when a massage is excitement, naturally it will become hooked with sex because sex is excitement. If massage is excitement and sex is also excitement they both become hooked, so in the west massage has become a sexual game.

The eastern way of massage is totally different, and that’s what is happening now. I was waiting for this moment. I had not talked about it because if I talk about it you may start pretending it, but this has now happened naturally on its own. I had not even given you a single hint about it. If hints are given about these things the mind is so cunning that it can manage, it can pretend. It can say, ’Now it is happening’; it can imagine, it can project, and then you miss the real thing.

Now the real has happened and the mind is puzzled about what is happening because now there will be no excitement and there will be no low also. When the high disappears the low disappears: when there are no mountains there are no valleys either; one starts moving on plain ground.

But this is the point: the other person is ill, his body is ill because he has lived a life of excitement; it has tired him. That excitement has created many blocks in him.

For example, if a person gets sexually excited again and again and the sexual excitement has almost become local, then there will be trouble because one part of the body becomes excited and the other parts remain cold so the energy does not flow. One part becomes excited, another part becomes the block, so one part starts flowing, another part remains frozen; then he is in division.

Somebody lives in the head and gets very excited about new thoughts, so the head becomes very very hot and the whole body becomes cold so the wholeness is lost... and so on and so forth.

Massage means: a method to bring the man to his totality, to his wholeness, so the flow is equal. All the parts are nourished equally and the energy flows equally all over the place. No part dominates...

no part functions as the dictator. The body becomes more democratic: each cell receives whatever it needs. And that will be more possible in that state when you are not excited. As excitement is catching, so is equilibrium.

When you are moving very silently, unexcitedly, almost unconcerned, a pool of silence goes on falling on the man. It will function like a lullaby. Mm? – his own excitement will start settling. This will be far better and this way you can do much more work. When excitement is there you will soon get tired, and when excitement is there you have to pay for it again and again with a low; a low is bad.

Now you will not have any low, you will not have any high. You can go very silently and you can do great work without getting tired. Work does not tire; it is excitement that tires.

So perfectly good... Everything is perfect – just go ahead and continue your work.

[A couple who are initiates of an indian swami are present. The man said he wanted to do groups, but had to restrain himself from having kriyas and giving shakti in front of non-initiates. He asks Osho for advice on how to do the groups under these condition.]

First thing: these ideas that you have got will not help you in you growth – these ideas that you should not move into kriyas.... You have to drop it, otherwise you will never grow. These kinds of things have existed down the ages. These are tricks to manipulate people and to keep them in control through fear: these are very subtle tricks to keep people in control, to make them afraid.

Once you are afraid, you are possessed by the man or whoever has made you afraid. Now a few things....

Shakti is neither yours nor mine nor anybody else’s – it is a universal force. It has nothing to do with anybody: it is all over. It is in the trees, it is in the river, it is in the ocean, it is roaring in the ocean.

It is in the clouds, it is lightning, it is electricity, it is gravitation. All that is is one energy, one shakti.

It is in you, it is in the woman, it is in the child. It was there in all the people who participated in the group.

And you become afraid.... If you start controlling, you remain isolated from this vast energy that is available. Kriya is one of the most essential things to go through; it cleanses you. If you stop kriya, if you stop expression, if you hold it in, you are just a miser and nothing else. But this miserliness exists in many sects. They are very much afraid – as if they are losing something. You cannot lose!

The more you give, the more you share, the more you express, the more you will be getting, because you are joined with an infinite source. It is almost like a well: you go on drawing water from the well and new water is constantly flowing.

If you become afraid... If you initiate the well and tell the well not to allow anybody to take any water out of it otherwise it will become empty one day, it will die. If you say that when it needs the water it will not have any, so it shouldn’t give water, it shouldn’t allow anybody to draw water... If the well becomes an initiate like you and becomes afraid and does not share and does not give water, what will happen?

The well will become sooner or later stagnant. Its water will become poisoned, its water will no more be fresh and flowing, and because no new water is coming those small fountains that bring the water by and by will be blocked.

Allow the well to be shared by as many people as possible and the well will remain fresh, the flow will remain fresh. And the ocean is always there sending you new sources.

So with me if you have to work here, kriya is a must.

... Yes, it must be there, without it there is no growth. Without it you become an island – isolated, separate, cut. When you allow it you become part of the whole: you become a continent.

I know that type of group exists in India – very miserly-type people – but they have existed long. I am not in favour of those people.

... I am not concerned with your guru; I am just concerned with you. If you want to choose that way, it is open for you; then you leave. With me there is no go because it is so contradictory that you will be constantly in trouble... so you choose! I’m not saying to be here and do this; I’m not saying that.

I am simply making it clear to you that here kriya is a must. Here kriya has to happen: the more it happens the better.

If you want to be here, then you have to follow me. If you are afraid, then you can go to your guru and do whatsoever you like; then that is not my concern. And I am not saying that you should not go there; I am not saying that. You can go – that is your choice – but I should make it clear to you that if you choose that kind of thing you will never grow.

[The visitor then says: ... in my groups I had kriya once or twice – I experimented – and I found that I lost very large amounts of energy after the groups.]

That’s what I’m saying: you have been taught to be very miserly! You have not lost anything; it is just your idea. It is exactly as in india people think that if you make love, you lose energy... so they do!

Nobody else in the whole world does: in the West nobody loses any energy by making love. In fact people get energy by making love, and the whole modern science is in favour of it: by making love you get energy; you don’t lose. But the whole hindu mind is a miserly mind, a very miserly, hoarding mind. One drop of semen should not be lost, otherwise you lose energy.

These people are constipated, their whole mind is constipated, and then they are afraid. When you are afraid and this idea goes deeper into you and one day you make love, suddenly the whole mind jumps on you, takes you by the neck, and says, ’What are you doing? You are losing energy!’ You start feeling afraid and you start feeling that you are losing energy... and naturally you feel frustrated that much energy has been lost... but that is your idea! Once it has been accepted it becomes an auto-hypnosis.

So the kriya that happened is happening to everybody. Nobody is losing energy – only you are; then something is wrong with you!

Thousands of people are coming and working here with kriyas. Nobody has come and told me that he loses energy; they are gaining energy by it. Here you come and say that you are losing energy.

Then you have something in the mind which is creating the idea.

And if you become afraid of losing energy you will shrink. you will go on shrinking. Then in each small thing you will start feeling that you are losing energy. Then you are in your grave; you will not be able to live.

Life means share, life means express, life means give and take: give and allow somebody to give to you.

But I know these people are there. To me these people are neurotic. If I have my say I will put them into hospitals: they have to be psychiatrically treated. They are simply insane people, but their insanity is very traditional, very scriptural; they can prove it by scripture and this and that.

So you have to think over it, mm? otherwise you will be in trouble. I don’t want to create any trouble for you. If you are too much into that idea please escape from here as fast as possible! If you are courageous enough to get into this new kind of energy phenomenon, then you are welcome – enter into it – but drop all those ideas.

It is just as for thousands of years people have been telling children that if you masturbate you lose energy, you will become weak in mind, you will become weak in heart, you will go crazy or you will become stupid, and this and that; you will be ill and all kinds of things.

That used to happen in the past... because when you tell a child that if he masturbates these things are going to happen, each time he masturbates these ideas will be there: ’Now you are doing it again you will go mad, you will become stupid, you will become silly, you will go crazy, you will go blind, and this and that.’

If he does not masturbate, then the energy is continuously there. Mm? now the society creates such trouble. A boy becomes sexually mature at the age of fourteen, and marriage is allowed somewhere after ten years – at twenty-four or twenty-five years of age or even later. Now what is that boy expected to do for these ten years?

Sexually he is mature at fourteen – he will become marriageable at twenty-four; these ten years are going to be torture. Now he cannot make love to a woman – that is immoral; he cannot masturbate because he will go mad. And people have gone mad... not because of masturbation but because of the idea that is constantly there. Now, nobody goes mad. Now even doctors suggest that masturbation should be done; it is healthy, hygienic. The whole modern research says it is hygienic and the whole past and its nonsense says it drives people mad.

You have been with people who don’t know a single thing about all the modern research that has gone into human energy. They are still living at least three thousand years back; these are primitive people.

It is for you to choose, mm? If you are feeling that you are growing there, go and work on that way. When you are finished with it, fed up with it, tired of it, when one day you see that nothing is happening and you are being more suffocated inside, then you can come, if I am here, and work.

Or if you choose to work here now, just throw these things away. Put them in a handkerchief, burn the handkerchief and be finished. Only then will you be able to do anything here, because all these groups are cathartic and all these groups are kriya groups.

My whole work is parallel to latihan. The kriya has to be allowed: it is only through kriya that you pulsate, that you start streaming, that you become more alive.

So you choose, mm? it is for you. It is a problem for you – you choose.

[The woman also asks: is it not possible to take the groups and to be here, to do that, and control our kriya?]

I’m not saying don’t do it – if you want to do it you can, but you will not be profited so much as would have been possible. It will be at the most twenty percent; you will miss eighty percent of it. But it is up to you: if you want to do... I’m not saying don’t do the groups – it is up to you, but you are doing two contradictory things, and that is unnecessary.

It is as if somebody is driving a car and goes on accelerating it and braking it. You are heavy on the mechanism; they should not be done together. When you want to brake you should leave the accelerator; you should not press the accelerator. All these groups are accelerating and what you are doing is braking in the middle.

It is for you to choose, but you are doing something opposite and that is bad on the system, it is not good on the system. And the profit will be very very small: you will lose eighty percent. But if you want to do it, it is perfectly okay; even twenty percent is better than nothing.

[She then asks which groups are more likely to bring kriyas.]

Leela may be heavy because it is an energy group; it is a pure play of energy.

There is much possibility for it if you allow. If you don’t allow then there is nothing; you can simply remain frozen. Your cooperation is needed; nothing will happen without your cooperation, so you can do it. If you feel like going into it, you can; if you don’t feel like going into it, you can pull yourself back.

... My whole work here is totally different to the old concept, it is totally revolutionary. I am against all this nonsense.

I would like to lead people more into kriya – more than they are going – but the government won’t allow it. A thousand and one problems are there, otherwise I would lead them completely into utter madness! Only from there, you jump! Only from there does one simply explode into another dimension.

Miserly, lukewarm – nothing happens. One has to go to the peak – to the peak of all your effort and all your energy. When everything is vibrating and nothing is repressed in you, then you are on the verge: just a single step and you enter the divine. It is from the extreme that the jump happens; it is never from the middle.

So it is for you to choose. Think about it; if you feel like being here, you can be. If you feel like doing half-heartedly, you can do that.

... it is up to you! I don’t suggest anything. I have made it clear to you that if you go whole-heartedly you will be more benefitted. If you can’t go whole-heartedly and still you want to do it, you can. A little benefit will be there; that too is good!

And my feeling is that if you are here for four, five weeks, you will drop all this nonsense that you are carrying in your heads. This is simply nonsense; this is no initiation... nothing at all.

And even if you go from here I am going to haunt you! It is not going to be so easy; once you come here it is difficult. I will continue to haunt you.

So do whatsoever you feel like, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says: I feel happy to be here!]

Right... Become more happy, mm?

People are very very reluctant to become happy. They have almost to be forced into it; they are so reluctant to be happy. They are so happy to be miserable and they are so unhappy to go into happiness; they find a thousand and one reasons not to go into it.

Go into it more, mm? There is no end to it, you can go on and on: it is a non-ending bliss. One just needs courage to go on, and higher and higher peaks are always available. So allow yourself a little more. People are very very hard in allowing themselves. they cling to their misery, to their past, to their patterns, and because of that clinging things don’t happen. So drop that clinging, and the new sprout that is coming up, help, water, nourish in every way so that soon it becomes a tree.

Man can become such blissfulness that there is no way to imagine it... we don’t know what is possible for us. We are just living like caterpillars; we don’t know that we can become butterflies.

We go on groping int he dark and crawling on the ground. and even if a butterfly comes and tells you to get out of this, you cling. You cling to your shell; you think it is your home.

It is only a temporary home; it has to be left again and again. We will make many temporary homes and we will destroy them. No home is a permanent home. Man is a wayfarer, a pilgrim, and all homes should be like tents: in the night you fix them, by the evening you have gone to sleep, by the morning you take them away and you move on. No home should be more than a tent – just an overnight stay.

So, much more is possible, mm? Don’t be satisfied with this small bit that has happened. Learn the taste from it and go ahead!

CHAPTER 22

Walk, enter – the way is here

24 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A new sannyasin says he is a musician. Osho says, perfectly good – that will fit with me!... ]

People who are in any way concerned with art are my people, because to me art is closer to religion than anything else. A mathematician is far away; a musician is very close. A logician is very very distant but a poet is just by the comer. Very good! Mm? now your music will start becoming more and more of the inner.

Meditate and it becomes inner... and the inner music is the real music; the outer is just an echo.

The appeal of the outer is also because of that; it gives you a certain taste of the inner. Listening to great music people immediately start feeling a kind of relaxation... a rest arises, their mind stops and they become more and more heart-full.

That’s why they love music, but that is nothing compared to the inner music when it is heard. In fact, only when it is heard do you understand what you were doing outside. It was just a haphazard way of finding the inner; in a stuttering way you were doing something of which you were not aware.

And then your outer music will also become very very rich. When you have heard the original, then the echo becomes more and more understandable.

[A sannyasin returning to the West says: I feel very full and enriched. I gained very much.]

I know! I am coming with you. And this can go on growing wherever you are. One just has to be a little more careful in life, that’s all... just a little more careful so that old habits don’t destroy you, that’s all. When something beautiful is growing it is like a rose-bush: you just have to be watchful so the weeds don’t start growing around the bush; otherwise they will choke the rose, they will kill the rose. They will take the juice from the earth and the flowers will not come up as big as they could have. And weeds are very persistent. If you throw away a rose-bush it will not grow by itself again.

All that is good is very very non-persistent, fragile, has no resistance, simply surrenders, but all that is bad is very persistent, very stubborn. You throw the weeds and again next month they are there.

You throw them again, and again they are there; they will go on fighting to the very.. and that’s how the mind is.

Now the rose is coming up so you have to be careful. In fact people who don’t have any inner experience, to whom nothing has happened inwardly, can afford to be careless; they have nothing to lose. But once something starts happening you have to be very very careful because now you have a responsibility to yourself. Otherwise this richness will disappear, and once it disappears one starts thinking, ’Was it a dream?’ One cannot believe; it was so impossible that one starts thinking,

’I must have imagined it. I must have been seeing dreams!’

Many times god comes very close to people – almost within reach: just a little groping and you will find. You feel the fragrance, you feel the silence, you feel the bliss, but those weeds are very persistent and they go on pulling. And once they have pulled you back you will forget this fragrance, and even if you remember or are reminded by somebody, you will say, ’Yes, it was there but it must have been imagination or something. How can it be real?’

The weeds become so real that they start posing as the only reality. They not only destroy roses, they make you believe that roses are just imagination or dreams, fantasies; they are not reality.

So when something starts happening – and now it has started happening and it will go on growing

– you have to be very watchful and not waste it on small things. Those weeds are very small....

Somebody says something and you get very much disturbed. It was such a small thing: if you think about it for a second you will see how trivial, how useless; what does it matter?

I have heard about a zen master.... A woman came to him. She was a very simple, innocent woman

– a villager, a farmer’s wife – and she said, ’Master, I don’t know how to grow and I don’t know what to do. I am very ignorant, uneducated, so I cannot even ask the right question. Just give me something, some small thing that I can do and I can understand.’

The master looked into her, and she had the potential, great potential. He said, ’Do only one thing

– this is your meditation. Whatsoever happens, simply repeat one thing: ”Take no notice”.’ So she followed that – a simple instruction.

The next day her son died – he had been ill for many months – and the whole house started crying and weeping. The husband was beating his chest, children were crying and the neighbours gathered. She was sitting there silently and somebody said, ’Have you gone mad? Your son is dead!’

She said, ’Take no notice.’

After a few days the house caught fire: everybody was running about and it was a great mess.

The whole town was trying to put the fire out and she was standing outside just looking at things.

Somebody said, ’What are you doing here? Do something! Fetch something, whatsoever is valuable!’

And she said, ’Take no notice’.

After a few more weeks one of her sons fell into the well. People tried to pull him out, and she was laughing! The husband thought, ’Now it is absolutely certain that she is mad!’ And he asked, ’Why are you laughing?’

She said, ’Take no notice’.

He said, ’You have gone mad and you are driving us all mad! Who has taught you this ”Take no notice”?’

So she took him to the master and she said to the master, ’I am immensely happy. Nothing makes any difference to me any more but my husband thinks I am mad. Say something to him; help him too.’

The master looked at the woman and said to the husband, ’Don’t be worried. Her first satori has happened. She is not mad! I have never seen such a potential woman before. Within two, three months, she has come close to home... and just by a single thing, but she really followed it.’

By small things life is destroyed and by small things life is saved; in fact there are no big things. So just take care and don’t get into small things. And you will be surprised that ninety-nine percent of your life, everybody’s life, consists of foolish things: quarrelling with the husband or with the child or with the friends... for nothing! If you think about it, if you pay a little attention, you yourself will laugh: it is so ridiculous!

So just watch and it will go on growing.

[The sannyasin adds: I wanted to ask... I feel very lonely in my community. There is no support yet.]

Create it! Just start talking to people, giving books to people, and people will start coming. It is everybody’s need. They have just to know where they can quench their thirst, that’s all; they are thirsty. Soon you will find that friends are gathering and when they gather they will be a great help to you.

You don’t have any centre there yet?

Should I give you a name so that you start a small centre for me?

[She answers: People were coming but I felt it was egoistic on my part to help them and I pushed them away.]

No, no, no. Just give all your ego to me and start work, mm?

This will be the name for your centre: abyo namdam; it means welcome. So everybody is welcome there, and people will be coming soon. Just start, mm? Good.

[A visitor says: I can’t find the way.]

The way is here! There is no need to find it. Just walk, enter – the way is here. Courage is needed, the way is not needed... the way is available. Become orange!

Just courage is needed; the way is not the question!

[He answers: I’ve got some fear.]

So it is not a question of the way; it is the question of fear!

With fear nothing ever happens. To get attached to fear is one of the most stupid things a man can do, because through fear nothing ever happens. Fear cripples you, paralyses you, kills you. What can happen with fear? You will shrink, you will become more and more closed. Fear won’t allow you any adventure in life – and life is adventure. It is only for those who are courageous enough to go into the unknown, the uncharted sea. One has to go without any map... One has simply to go!

Fear keeps you rooted in the past; fear is destructive to the future. So if you want to be afraid, only be afraid of fear and nothing else. One should fear only fear, that’s all.

[The visitor says: I’m a teacher... It’s difficult.]

Good... you have a good job...

I am... I have always been a teacher, so I don’t see how it is difficult, mm? I never wanted to be anything else!

That may also be because of the fear – because fear never allows you to learn anything and without learning how are you going to teach? Fear makes you so self-conscious that you will be afraid of the disciples, students – you will be continuously afraid of what they are thinking about your performance.

Fear turns everything into a performance; life becomes bogus. Fear simply means that you are so concerned about the self – how you look to others, what their opinion is. Is some boy giggling and laughing? Is he trying to ridicule you? There is fear and you start trembling and you lose all consciousness; that may be the same thing.

Drop fear – I will make you a great teacher!

[Osho gives him sannyas.]

... So forget the old name and forget all fear with it – and it is only a question of forgetting.

Man is nothing but the mind: if you think you are a coward you are a coward; if you think you are brave you are brave. It is thinking that makes it so: as a man thinketh, so he becomes. It is simply a question of his own thinking, but when you think something again and again it gets more and more deep in you; it becomes a rut in the brain cells.Immediately, whenever any situation arises, the deep-rooted habit starts asserting itself and you think you are that. You are not!

You are not your habits because you are not your brain and you are not your thoughts. You are this awareness that feels that there is fear. So you are not fear – you can see the fear. You are somebody else: the watcher.

Deva means divine and rasen means juice – divine juice. And it is there... it just has to start flowing.

Once it starts flowing you will be in such a rejoicing.

Every human being carries such great joy but does not allow it to happen... carries an ocean of joy but remains a poor man, remains a beggar. So drop beggarly ways! From this moment you are a king, a master of yourself.

The old habits will come again and again but you have simply to say ’No, nothing doing! I am free of you’ – and soon you will see that they have stopped coming. When you don’t receive them they don’t come; when they are not welcome they don’t come.

[The enlightenment intensive group is present. One member asks: I want to know – since you are a mirror – who I am.... ]

Mirrors don’t speak! They simply show. You have to look in the mirror, otherwise...

[The sannyasin continues: I want to know how to work past the limit of curiosity to attain the core of my question.]

It is going to happen, mm?... it is going to happen – wait. It is not a question that can be answered.

It will happen; just keep it inside you. Just go on holding it there: ’Who am I?’ Not that you have to repeat it continuously. No, in some moments simply just once remember ’Who am I?’ and leave it there. Before you go to sleep in the night, just remember ’Who am I?’ and fall asleep. In the morning when you are waking up, just remember ’Who am I?’... and don’t even think that the answer has to come.

It is not that the answer has to come; it is not that somebody says, ’You are xyz’, or something. If some answer comes like that, know it is wrong; all answers are wrong. It is not a question to find an answer for.

One day you will suddenly find, ’Yes, it is there!’ You know it... and in that moment the question disappears. Not that you receive an answer – the answer is never received and the question also disappears – but you have the taste of it.

A disciple came to a zen master. He had been meditating for three, four years, and he would come again and again and ask, ’Sir, am I not ready yet?’

His question was the same as this ’Who am I?’ – and the master would say ’Wait! The answer is to come; go on questioning.’ By the time nine years had passed, one day the question disappeared.

He tried to formulate it and he could not remember what it was. For nine years he was asking ’Who am I?’ and suddenly one day he fell into such a new space that he could not remember what the question was! For nine years he had asked!

Then he knew, and he came laughing. The master said, ’So now, now tell me: What is the answer?’

And he said, ’It is like when you drink water: you know whether it is cold or hot.’

It is not a question that has to be answered. It is a question that explodes into no-question. Go on with it... this group has been really good for you!

CHAPTER 23

Doing is okay – non-doing is okay

25 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A fifteen-year-old sannyasin tells Osho he left school, in the West, because he had some problems there. Very good! says Osho, the earlier the problems start, the better, so one can start solving them. He suggests some groups and then asks him if he has anything to say. I always imitate people – talk the way they do, make the same gestures as them, the body says. It just happens. Do it more perfectly, that’s all, says Osho – make it an art. If it is unconscious it is bad, so do it very consciously and you can become a great actor. It can become a great experience because your consciousness will grow: you will have to be aware when you are studying someone. Osho tells him to select one sannyasin each day to imitate. Make it perfect, he adds, improve it. Do it so that the person feels as if he is imitating you!]

[The tantra group is present. One member says he’s feeling confused about what to do when desires come up. When he plays them out he sees that he’s doing and not letting things happen. If on the other hand he doesn’t go with them, he condemns himself for not following what he’s feeling.]

The way you are trying you will remain trapped. The trap is created by your effort, the very effort is creating the trap. You misunderstand the whole approach. When I say, ’Let things happen’, I don’t mean don’t do, otherwise how will they happen?

I am simply saying that while you are doing things let them happen through you. I’m not saying to just sit silently and let things happen; then how will they happen? The food will not cook by itself –

you will have to cook it, but while cooking it you need not become a cook. You can remain floating; you can allow god to cook food for you, through you: you become an instrument.

This is one of the basic problems that has faced humanity always, and people have always got trapped in it. If you say to them to do, they do too much; out of doing the ego arises and they are trapped. If you say to them, ’Let things happen’, they simply become lazy, they drop all doing; then nothing happens. They are trapped and then they think nothing is happening.

When I say to let things happen, I mean let things happen through you. They cannot happen from anywhere else, they will not happen out of the blue. You will have to do but you need not become a doer. Doing will be there, the doer will disappear – that’s the whole point – and then you are never trapped.

And sometimes you would like to do too much because in that moment it may be your natural desire to do. Then go into it – just don’t become a doer; don’t pay too much attention to doing. Doing is okay; just remember that you are not to become an ego. Don’t say, ’I have done this’. Keep the attitude, ’It has happened through me; god has done it’. When you paint a picture, just say, ’God has painted through me; I was instrumental’. When you write a poem, just say, ’God has written it’; don’t sign it. That’s all... it is simple.

The way you are taking it you will be trapped... and you are not a man who can simply relax: you have energy, you have more than enough energy. It needs to flow, it needs to become great foliage around you, it needs to bloom. So if a tree starts thinking that it has not to do anything and it starts pulling itself in and flowers don’t come, the tree will say, ’The flowers are not coming’. The tree has to flower – it just need not do it deliberately; it need not become a doer. You follow me? Simply allow!

Sometimes one feels like being lazy; then be lazy. That’s what god wants you to do in that moment.

And sometimes one is feeling so full of energy, overflowing; one wants to do many things. Then do many things and enjoy doing it!

Sometimes enjoy non-doing – when it comes easily; don’t force it. Sometimes enjoy doing – when it comes easily; don’t force it. Let things come easily; doing or non-doing, that is irrelevant.

Sometimes sit silently and enjoy if that is that moment’s desire. Listen to each moment and don’t get fixed. And never allow the ego to arise out of anything whatsoever. Watch that the ego does not arise, and then everything is right, everything is okay. Doing is okay, non-doing is okay.

CHAPTER 24

The beginning is half the journey

26 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor says: For a long time I’ve been trying to understand ’tat twam asi’. I’ve been meditating on it and intellectually I can’t get any understanding about this phrase.]

Intellectually there is no way to understand it; it has nothing to do with intellect and it is not a philosophical statement. It is just an exclamation, a realisation. It is not a theory – it has no logic behind it; it is very illogical but it is an experience, an existential moment when you see it as: ’that art thou’. It is a realisation that you are not separate from existence. ’That’ means the existence; you and the existence that surrounds you are not separate.

But this is an experience; there is no way to understand it intellectually. Intellectually you are separate... in fact it is intellect that makes you separate, so how can you understand it intellectually?

It is asking the very disease to prescribe the medicine. It is intellect that makes us separate. When you are deep in your sleep, you are ’tat twam asi’. You don’t know you are separate; you are that, that is you.

When you are awake and intellectually functioning it is very difficult to think that you are that. How can you be this rock and how can you be this tree and how can you be me? And the walls – how can you be them? You are certainly separate. If I am killed you will not be killed; if I die the whole existence is not going to die, so how can you be one with it? You are certainly separate.

Intellect creates separation, so intellect is the instrument to separate thou from that. Now you are trying the absurd: you are trying to understand intellectually; then it becomes just a philosophy. Even if you understand intellectually it is of no use. Intellectual understanding is not an understanding at all. The only understanding that can be called understanding is non-intellectual, intuitive.

So the first thing that I will suggest to you is to drop that idea. That idea is not of any use; simply forget about it. If you go on remembering it and repeating it and trying to understand it, you will miss it forever. Simply forget about it!

Get absorbed in things. Sometimes dancing, become the dance and you will know. Not that somebody will shout at you ’tat twam asi’... not that it will come like that statement written somewhere inside your mind. No god is going to give it to you as a commandment, nothing will happen, but you will simply know.

So start getting absorbed; that is my suggestion. Forget this thing. You are making an unnecessary problem for yourself, you are creating a confusion and a mess.

The Upanishads are not books to be read... they are not ordinary books at all – they are fire! One should not read them. They can only be lived and known.

My own approach is that people who become great readers and students of the upanishads miss the whole point. First you should allow that experience to happen and then you should go to the Upanishads; then you will find affirmations there.

Get lost in dance, sing a song and get lost in it, go swimming and get lost in the river, running on the beach forget everything: just become the running. Then from many doors you will have that feel, and it will not become a syllogism ’tat twam asi’ – no. You will have that feel in many ways1

through many doors – just a glimpse, a lightning. And then one day, reading the upanishads, you come across this sentence, ’tat twam asi’: suddenly you know that this is so. Now the upanishads have confirmed you.

Maybe you were not able to form this mahavakya – this great sentence – ’tat twam asi’; that art thou.

Suddenly it clicks, but the experience is needed first – and people are doing just the opposite. First they read the Upanishads and then they try to find the experience. This is standing on your head; this is putting the bullocks behind the cart.

Forget it. You are getting into trouble... you can get into far more trouble.

Simply forget all these Upanishads. That’s why zen people say ’Burn all the scriptures’. They know, they know exactly what is to be done with the scriptures. Scriptures are dangerous. Burn them and move into existence!

From there god will make the first approaches towards you; god will become available from there.

’That’ means god, and once you have tasted it....

Everybody is not so articulate as the seers of the upanishads so maybe you have tasted it but you cannot make a poetry out of it. But reading poetry suddenly you recognise ’Yes, this is what I wanted to say myself’, but this is secondary – this is not primary; the scripture is secondary.

Nobody comes to truth by reading the scriptures. But you can come to truth directly and then you can read the scriptures... and all scriptures say the same thing. Start meditating!

... Gather courage and become a sannyasin, mm? Just to become a scholar needs no courage. It is a very cowardly business, this scholarship. Gather courage and become a sannyasin. I am here, ready to take you to ’that’, mm? Good!

[A sannyasin says: I find it very difficult to communicate with women. I’m constantly with them, but...

as soon as I get close to a lady I just clam up, and then there’s nothing there.]

And would you like to communicate and to become friendly?

[He answers: Yes, sure.]

Just come closer. Raise your hands and close your eyes, and if something starts happening in the body, you allow it....

One is: it is just a question of habit, it is not a very deep-rooted problem. You can become a great lady-killer, mm?... just a question of habit; you have formed a wrong habit. Maybe it is because of circumstances – your mother, your parents, your society – so you have carried that up to now. It just needs a deliberate effort to drop it... even if you have to force it to drop.

So for three weeks, do one thing: force it to drop. Go, push yourself into communication. Don’t wait for it to happen – no, don’t wait for that; it won’t happen. All these years you have made a habit; that habit has to be destroyed. It is just like a conditioning around you – you have to make a conscious effort to break it. And within three weeks it will go; it is nothing much. Your energy is there, perfectly good; just a crust is around you. If you cannot break it here, you cannot break it anywhere else in the world, so don’t miss this opportunity.

And it is not only a question of being able to communicate with women.... If you cannot communicate with women outside, you will be incapable of communicating with your inner woman – and that is the real problem. I am not much interested in the outer woman – if you communicate or not communicate, that does not matter much – but if you cannot communicate with the outer woman you will remain cut in two inside. Your man part will not be able to meet and mingle with the woman part within you. Hence my emphasis so much that people should fall in love, move in love, communicate.

Meeting with the outer woman you come closer to your inner woman, and when you can love a woman outside, your inner distance becomes very very much less.

Sometimes, making love to an outer woman, suddenly you are not only dissolving into the outer woman, inside also you start dissolving... and that is of ultimate value. The outer woman will disappear, the outer man will disappear, but once that inner integrity has arisen, then there is no need for the outer; you can forget about communicating outside.... Because communication brings many problems too; complications are there.

A woman is not just beautiful, neither is a man just beautiful; they bring a thousand and one problems with them. But once the inner integration has started happening you can afford not to relate outside.

Right now you cannot afford that. Right now your energy is flowing, but there is a split: your woman is standing aloof, your man is standing aloof; they are not talking to each other.

This ice has to be broken, and the only and the easiest way is to break it with an outside woman.

So you start looking.... And now these people (indicating the group) have heard so they will spread the news – that somebody is looking for a woman... because women here are looking for men! Men are proving real cowards!

So just let this rumour be spread, then many women will start attacking you! And I don’t have ordinary women here: they are very dangerous ones!

Just get out of it... try to get out of it. Whenever you have an opportunity, force yourself to get out of it, that’s all! If you are walking with a woman, why not hold her hand? If you can hold her hand, hold it; if you can hug the woman, hug – don’t miss that contact. Be more physical in relating – that will break the habit, because the habit has entered into the body; it is no more just mind. You will have to do something. It has become muscular; it is almost physical now. So hold her hand, hug the woman, go swimming with a woman, invite a woman to dance.

Do whatsoever you can for three weeks... and don’t bother very much that you have to wait for a perfect woman to appear. Any woman will do; you are just to break the habit so any woman will be helpful. So don’t be too much concerned about aesthetics and morality and this and that. Just be simply communicative with a human being.

Say something to people. If you cannot say something, at least listen to them! Listen attentively

– and that is communication... sometimes more effective than talking to them. If you can listen attentively people really feel very very loving towards you... because nobody is listening to anybody: everybody is ready to say something but nobody is ready to listen. Become a good listener if you don’t find something to say.... And women are great talkers; they will enjoy you very much, mm?

Just listen, just provoke them to talk. Start from this very moment, mm?... just look around and start!

And there is no problem, not at all. And after three weeks, tell me.

I will manage to have many women follow you. Just after three weeks you will come and say ’Enough, Osho!’

It is going to go! Just sit here and have a look. If you feel attracted to somebody, start communicating; don’t be worried! This is the most auspicious moment to start. Good!

[A sannyasin who has Hodgkin’s disease and TB says: I’m really scared about the idea that I might die... I tried witnessing it and it just stays there.... ]

No, no, witnessing won’t help because you will be using witnessing just as a trick to avoid it. Just accept it and then it will disappear. So what? One is going to die, so one is going to die. What can you do about it? Accept it, and simply by accepting it there is no problem in it. And then it will become a great experience.

You are not going to die, mm? you will live – but this experience will become of great value. Very few people are so fortunate to go through this; don’t miss it! Everybody dies but death comes to very few people this way. Death takes you very unawares: one day you are caught in it, it doesn’t give you any chance to think about it. Then there is no opportunity to grow into it. You are fortunate; death is coming making much noise.

And it is a bogus death; it is not coming either. It is just your fear... but the fear has to be accepted: yes, it is okay. If you are going to die, you are going to die. What difference does it make whether it is today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow? It does not make much difference. Some day one has to die... any day is a good day. Just by postponing it for a few years, what difference will it make?

How many years more do you want to live? Just tell me exactly – and then don’t change it!...

It does not make any difference whether you live for fifty years or seventy years or one hundred years: one day one dies. So don’t miss this opportunity. Accept it! – it is perfectly okay. And the moment you accept you will suddenly feel that the fear has disappeared.

Fear is because of non-acceptance – fear is not of death, remember. Everybody here is going to die but nobody is afraid. Fear is of non-acceptance: these people here are not thinking of death so there is no question of rejecting or of accepting. For you the problem has arisen of what to do now?

Death is there. Do you accept it or do you reject it? If you reject it you will not be able to sleep.

Last night I had to come to you because you wouldn’t sleep.

[The sannyasin later confirmed experiencing Osho’s presence in his room the night before.]

For two, three, nights you have not slept – but that is not going to help. That is bringing death closer unnecessarily... and death is not there! I don’t see it coming so soon. Mm? You have to do many many things for me, so it is not so easy.

But don’t miss this opportunity! Accept it, and in that acceptance you will find such freedom, such silence. Later on you will see that this opportunity was really an opportunity; you would have missed it! No, just accept it... and sheela, you too accept it. What to do? [You are] going; then one has to say good-bye!

What can be done? Man is helpless. So serve him and love him and do whatsoever you can do for him, but be happy and make him happy. I don’t see that there is any problem right now – but this problem will come one day or other, so why not tackle it right now? Be finished with it, so whenever it comes next time it will not be a problem. And next time I may not be here, so why not use me this time and be finished with this problem? Accept it, accept it in toto. When one totally accepts death, it becomes almost impossible for death to come.

And your disease is more or less concerned with your mind. You were perfectly healthy three, four, days before. You have never been as healthy as you have been for the past two, three, months, but within three, four, days you are down... and this is just a mind thing; this has nothing to do with your disease! It is just because the x-ray people have said that the shadow is bigger, mm?

If you had not gone for the examination you would have still been perfect. Your weight is going well, your allergy is less; I don’t see you looking as you were before. Mm? you are looking perfectly healthy – you have never been so healthy. Now there is no point in death coming when you are becoming so healthy; there is no point.

But whatsoever it is, accept it... and take it easy! If you are going to die, don’t be worried – I will take care: you will have a good death! If you are going to survive, you will have a good life. Either way I promise you, so just don’t be worried at all.

And you have created this problem unnecessarily. You should have asked me about stopping your medicines. I am here, and this is a vital thing. You should have asked me... you stopped your medicines. It happens almost always that whenever people are becoming better, they think, ’What is the need of the medicine?’ But your problem is such that the need of medicine may remain for your whole life. But what is wrong in it? Just as you take a cup of tea every day, you can take a few medicines; there is not a problem in it! There is no need to stop it; you created this unnecessarily.

So now accept it, mm? and tonight, just relax. Entertain the idea of death. If it is coming, let it be beautiful – make it a joy; give it a good reception. At least get ready! I don’t think it is coming but why not get ready? Some day it will come, then you can use that reception again. I may not be here to tell you next time. It is better you prepare now.

And the doctor’s suggestion is right: on the second, doctor paymaster comes, so show him everything, and if he feels that some test is needed, go to the states; let it be tested. Nothing is a problem – I don’t think there is any – but you can create the problem!...

And I will tell everybody. They will help you; don’t be worried, mm? So tell everybody wherever you go, so that everybody asks, ’When are you going to die?’

Nothing to be worried about, mm? – this thing will go. But if you get into fear too much, you may create some complication. From this moment drop creating more complications, and the best way is to accept death. Just try: tonight, just accept it. And that’s exactly what I mean when I say, ’entertain the idea’ – the idea that you are going to die. How beautiful! Then all problems will disappear and you will be moving to great rest and silence.

What is there to fear in death? That’s something strange – that people go on being afraid. People should be afraid of life because life brings problems. Death brings no problems; it simply solves all problems.

Accept it, mm? Up to the second, completely accept it... and you will be surprised: that shadow may disappear if you accept it. If vou don’t accept it, then the tension, the strain, may create more shadow on the chest.

Start laughing and enjoying and dancing and meeting people, and talk about death and tell them,

’I am going to die – have you any suggestions?’ you have to prepare for it, so ask people their suggestions and ideas about death, mm?

... Have you a box with you?... Whenever you start thinking against death, just put it on your heart and it will help you to die, mm? Accept the idea and tomorrow morning you will be flowing again.

When I take care of you, you need not be worried. Good?

CHAPTER 25

We are coming closer to a better world

27 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Ram is one of the names of god. In india we have one thousand names for god. The basic idea is that all names are of god – obviously, because there is nobody else other than god so all names are his, all forms are his. It is god manifest in everything.

Ram is one of the names of god, and the indian term ram, if read backwards, becomes ’mara’; that means death. So life and death are not two separate things. If you read this one way it is life, god himself, if you read the other way it is death itself... so life and death are two aspects of the same coin.

There is a story about valmiki; he was an uneducated man, very rough. He was a robber and a murderer, and he was going to rob a saint. The saint laughed, and he said to the man, ’Why are you doing all this, for what? You will not be here forever.’ And the robber said, ’I am doing it for my children, for my wife; my parents are old.’

And the saint said, ’You go and ask them if they will share the bad karmas that will arise out of your acts. Are they ready to share those effects?’

The robber laughed; he said, ’You seem to be a very cunning fellow! I will go home to ask and you will escape.’

So the saint said, ’You can tie me to this tree with ropes and I will wait.’

So the robber went home; he asked his wife, ’Will you share my bad karmas?’

The wife said, ’What nonsense are you talking? I am your wife; you have to look after me. I don’t know what you do, I don’t care what you do. How you earn the money is your business. Why should I share your karmas?’

And the children simply refused. They said, ’What, us? We don’t know anything about your business, about what you do.’

And the old parents said, ’We are old; it is your duty to serve your father and mother. It is your choice: if you can’t serve in the right way, it is your choice. Why should we share?’

The man was very much disillusioned: so they were all ready to take the money, but nobody was ready to share his bad karmas!

He went back to the saint and he said, ’Initiate me into sannyas – I am finished with all this nonsense!

I was thinking they are together in everything with me, in good, in bad, in happiness, in unhappiness, but they are only with me if they feel that I have money and I am happy and I am giving them something. Teach me something.’

So the saint – his name was narga – told him, ’Just repeat the word ”ram”; go on repeating it as much as you can. Forget everything and just repeat the word ”ram, ram, ram...”’

The saint went away and when he returned after three years, this man had become enlightened

– just by repeating the word ’ram, ram, ram’. But he was an uneducated man so when he was repeating ’ram, ram, ram...’ continuously, it became ’mara, mara, mara....’ He forgot that he had to repeat ’ram’ so he was repeating ’mara, mara, mara....’ He became enlightened – even by repeating wrongly, but he became absorbed in it.

The saint was surprised because he himself was not yet enlightened, and he said ’I have been doing everything rightly and you have not even been able to repeat the name rightly! This is a miracle!

How did it happen?’

So god came in a vision to the saint, narga, and he said, ’It does not matter how you repeat it – all names are mine! The question is what energy you pour into it. The question is what focusing you bring into it, what consciousness you bring to it. This man is simply incredible! In these three years, not for a single moment has he been thinking of anything else. Day in, day out, even in his dream he is just continuously repeating, ”ram, ram, ram...”. Even in his sleep his lips are moving; even when he falls deep in sleep, something deep inside his heart goes on repeating ”ram”.’

In India, this is one of the most loved names of god....

[Osho gives an initiate the name prem nandan – love bliss. Get more into love and joy, Osho says to her. Nobody is stopping you: you can be as loving, as joyful, as you want to be. Love and joy go together; it is one dance. Become more loving and you will see that more love follows: it is a by-product, a shadow, of love. Happiness cannot be sought directly. Something has to be done with your love energy and then joy follows. So let love be your prayer and joy will start flooding you!]

[A sannyasin says he has a sensation in his belly. He says he feels like throwing it out when it becomes very intense and yet it isn’t anger. It’s as if emotions come and go but have no labels, no definitions; they’re just feelings. Should he keep it in or let it go?

Osho checks his energy.]

Mm, it is perfectly good! Try to hold it inside, just try to hold it inside. It is beautiful energy. It has nothing to do with anger, nothing to do with sadness, but it can look like anger because it is very vital like anger, and it can look like sadness too because it is very weak like sadness. Still it is neither sadness nor anger. It is pure energy that the system is releasing. And this is a beautiful moment; you should hold it.

And if it wants to come out, then allow it very graceful expression – smiling, dancing, but very graceful; don’t be violent otherwise it will be a wastage. If you are very graceful, very smooth, very silent – even in your expression – then it is not wasted. It will go and spread all over your system, it will reach to every cell of the body. So movement you can do, but very very graceful movements like a dancer.

Just the other day I was reading about a zen master who was a dancer, a great dancer, and he used to teach his disciples meditation through dance.

One day he was called by the Emperor to dance before him; he went. The Emperor enjoyed the master’s dance so much that he asked again and again for more and more and more. Half the night had passed when the emperor released him and said that now he was perfectly happy. He gave the master many presents, valuable diamonds, much money.

The master had to take all those valuable presents back to his monastery; it was outside the town.

A robber started following him – it was a good chance – but the master was walking so gracefully that the robber could not dare to attack the man! The grace was such, the very movement of the master was such, that the robber became hypnotised and he completely forgot that he had come to rob this man.

And when he reached the monastery, he realised. that he had followed this man almost magnetised; he could not go away either! He fell at the master’s feet and said, ’I came to rob you but you have robbed me. Now initiate me! What kind of movement is this? You reduced me to being almost like a moth – just like a moth who goes on rushing towards a flame knowing perfectly well that only death can happen there, but there is some immense attraction.’

The robber said, ’I knew it – that you were going towards your monastery and there would be thousands of monks, your disciples, and I would be in danger, but something pulled me. I could not rob you, I could not go back.... The movement was so graceful! How did you manage it?’

This is the energy by which it can be managed. When this energy starts spreading all over your system, a very unknown grace arises.

So one thing to be remembered: no violent catharsis. First try to hold it as much as you can... to relax into it... just go into and relax into it with not even a movement of the body. But when you feel it has become too much and it is unbearable – there will be moments when it becomes unbearable

– then stand up and allow slow movements, very slow movements. Just allow a slow movement of the hand with it taking hours to come to this point... very slow movements – as slow as possible, as if there is no hurry. Walk very slowly, make small dances but very slowly. Smile, don’t laugh. Make everything very very soft.... And things are going very well.

[Osho suggests some non-cathartic groups for him.

The sannyasin then describes an experience when he was working long hours cleaning pots – he became completely detached: It was as if I were on the ceiling, looking down at me working, and then I get quite frightened.]

Very good... very good!...

I understand; there is no need to explain it. This witnessing will happen many times, and it will grow.

As your energy is there more and more, it will grow.

For a few moments you will simply disappear up beyond the roof. And the work will continue but you will become very detached. You will be doing it almost like an automaton, robot-like. Mm? the body is doing things and you can see that you are not doing and yet it is happening; you will be able to do that. It is very beautiful, mm? This is what is called witnessing. Just conserve energy. Very good.

[Another sannyasin asks for advice on returning to the west to commence a three-year ecology course. Osho checks his energy.]

My feeling is that you should do your ecology course, mm? It will be good for your growth too – so it is not only for the future: it will help you. It will give you a vision and a perspective, and you will become a better sannyasin out of it.

So go, join the course, mm? and each year whenever you have vacations you can come for one or two months and that will do. I will give you enough in that time so that for one year you will never run out of gas! Mm? Good!

[A sannyasin couple who have been together seven years are experiencing differences when the woman has become involved in groups. Osho gives them an ’energy darshan’ together.]

There is nothing wrong with your energies, mm? I think that will always be your way – that sometimes fooling around will be helpful, and then you will be more into each other again. There are many types of couples....

One type of couple needs a few holidays from each other – and you are that type. So if you are together for too long you will feel bored; she particularly will feel very bored. And when she is bored, of course you can’t be happy; it is impossible. When you love a person and the person is bored, feeling unhappy, you start feeling unhappy. When you are unhappy, she will feel the relationship is even more meaningless and she will start feeling guilty too that she is making you unhappy because she is bored. So a vicious circle arises and things go on becoming more difficult.

For a couple like you the best way is to have a weekend apart. So sometimes she can be with other people and sometimes you can be with other women. And this will not destroy your relationship, this will enhance it.

There are people whose relationship will be destroyed immediately. They can’t have any weekends; they don’t love that much. Really that is not a very ideal couple: they don’t love very much, they are more possessive. Love is less, so they are substituting love by possessiveness, and more than being in love, they are on ego-trips.

That type of couple has been predominant down the ages and they have created a great morality around themselves. They think they are the ideals: everyone else who is not according to them falls below, is a sinner or a criminal or immoral. They have nothing but condemnation for people other than their own type.

And because these people are very possessive, very dictatorial, they have dictated their whole philosophy to the society too. These people are dominant types, very articulate. They make the law, they make all kinds of rules and regulations in the world; naturally they have them made according to themselves.

The world has not existed for all kinds of people up to now: it has always been dominated by one type and naturally the other types suffer. But now we are coming closer to a better world where other types will be accepted... a more fluid kind of world where, if it gives you joy, everything is right.

If you don’t create any trouble for anybody, then whatsoever you are doing is good.

So this is my feeling about you – that it will be good if sometimes she is having an affair and you are having an affair. Go with understanding, and after each affair you will feel yourselves closer than ever. All boredom will disappear and again you will be in love. (To the woman) After each love affair you will find more in him and he will find more in you. And those love affairs will not destroy you; they will enhance.

To me this type is the majority in the world. That’s why the world is in such misery – because the very minor type has been dominant and the majority has been crushed. They cannot even say...

you cannot say this to your lover – that because you love her so much, you would like to sleep with somebody else. Just even to say this seems to be nonsense, absurd, but there is great logic behind it.

It is always good to move with somebody else, then suddenly you will see the beauty of the person you are living with. This change of taste will bring the old taste back again and you will start hankering for it. If you do it with understanding, there will be no trouble and no problems.

There need not be any divorce between you but mini-divorces will be very helpful. Divorce happens because we don’t allow the mini-divorces. I am all for mini-divorces... it is nothing wrong. It is very natural and human really; we have made very inhuman ideas.

You eat the same vegetable every day, every day, for seven years. Just think of it! If you start becoming crazy, bored and not in the present, do you think something is wrong with you?

Nothing is wrong; it is simply an inhuman idea. Man has not been looked into when the ideals have been decided. They have not been decided according to man; they have been decided according to a few types and if you don’t fit then you are wrong. That’s where people like jesus bring a new revolution into the world. He says, ’The sabbath is for man’... not man for the sabbath. That’s what I am saying to you.

You are together to be happy; there is no other reason to be together. If the relationship is becoming unhappy, then find a way: create happiness again. My feeling is that persons will never get fed up with each other if sometimes they have a little freedom to move and they can be on their own... and without any guilt, otherwise guilt creates trouble.

If she has to go with somebody like a thief and has to hide it from you, that becomes bad, that is heavy on the heart. If you have to go with some woman and you have to do it in secret, that too is heavy and that creates a thousand and one lies, and sooner or later those lies will be found out.

In fact, the reason why they are caught is very beautiful.... (to the man) If one day suddenly you find that she is very happy with you, that will be the reason – that she has been with somebody else.

If suddenly the wife finds that the husband is too happy with her today, then something is wrong!

That’s a sure sign that he has been somewhere else. His zest is back, his enthusiasm is back; he is thrilled again, he is young again. The gap that the other woman has created has become a mini-divorce... and mini-divorces are a must; in a happy life they are needed.

And if this happens with understanding, then no guilt is created. When you understand each other, more love flows. When she can understand that if some day you start feeling like going with a woman... it is human, it is perfectly beautiful. If you don’t feel like that, then something is wrong really: that means you have indifferent to women, how can you be loving to her? She is a woman!

And this is what is being done: the wife continuously goes on looking to see if the husband is interested in some other woman. If she feels he is smiling, if she feels he is looking at somebody more attentively than is allowed, she is against it... but she does not know; she is suicidal. She will kill her husband’s interest in other women – but she is also a woman!

Sooner or later when all interest in women is destroyed, the interest in this woman will also disappear; then her whole effort has been suicidal. Then she is worried and she feels that now there is no love flowing; what has happened? And she has done it! In the same way the husband goes on doing the same thing to the wife.

[We have such neurotic egos that we demand the other only love when with us and no one else. But love is like breathing, Osho says: it is the spiritual breath. The body lives through air and the soul lives through love.... ]

We have killed people’s soul, utterly destroyed them. People are just zombies, just dead bodies walking around, managing somehow, dragging somehow, waiting only for death, and there is nothing else to happen.

Understand it, and if you love each other – and that is my feeling, that you love; that’s why I am saying this – it is possible. Only if you love is this understanding possible.

You love each other, you understand each other, you give total freedom to each other. It is perfectly good sometimes if she moves with somebody and it is perfectly good when you want to move with somebody. You will find that you are becoming again fresh, young, green. Love will start flowing again... and then there is no need to separate.

The need to separate arises because you don’t allow her to be free, she does not allow you to be free; then finally every marriage is on the rocks. Either accept this deadness or escape from it. And I think the people who accept it are impotent people but those impotent people have dominated the whole world.

And when a certain philosophy continues for many centuries it becomes part of our presuppositions; we don’t think about it. Now nobody thinks about it; we simply accept it and we believe in it: it is part of our blood and bones.

It is very natural. If you live with a person for seven years and you are not fed up, then something is wrong; if you are not bored, then something is wrong.

[The man says: Well, we have had a relationship in which we have separated and come back, separated and come back.]

Yes, that’s very good! That’s why you have been together for seven years. Allow it now with great understanding. In fact, help each other to be free and things will be perfectly okay.

[The woman asks: Do you think we should live together... because we’re not living together?]

That too, is for you to decide. Sometimes if you feel like not living together that too is perfectly okay, because that too is again just an idea. Living together is not the point; the point is being together.

Living together is very simple; if you are not together, what is the point? You can live in the same room, you can sleep in the same bed, but you are not together – that’s pointless!

Sometimes when you feel like being together, be together. When you feel like moving alone, perfectly good; accept it with great love and understanding. And I don’t see that there is any problem, mm?

CHAPTER 26

To me, this and that world are not separate

28 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[A visitor said he had been, for a short time, in a seminary in rome monastery in Thailand.]

... This is also good, mm? – nothing is bad, everything helps. Do a few groups here – that will help you to come out of the monastery. Because it is very easy to escape from the monastery but to escape from the monastic mind is not so easy. That you are still carrying inside; it has to be taken out of your system.

When you strive very hard for something it gets into your blood and bones. You can escape, but something of it will continue in your system. That has to be thrown out, otherwise one day you can again become a victim of something.

And enlightenment is not attained by striving for it – no. Striving itself is the greatest impediment.

You don’t attain it by making effort; you attain it by relaxing all efforts. It happens. It is not an attainment really, it is not an achievement... and the achiever’s mind never reaches it.

It is a relaxation: when you are not striving for anything, not thinking to achieve anything, not even thinking about enlightenment, then it happens. It takes you always unawares: when you are really looking for it hard, it goes on eluding you. That is not the way to get to it. It is very elusive, mercury-like.

When you are simply sitting open, living your ordinary life – eating when hungry, and sleeping when feeling sleepy, loving when love arises; when you are living a very very ordinary life, with no hankering that you have to become this and that, that you have to become a buddha, when you are not trying to become anything, when you are happy the way you are, when you are immensely at ease with yourself – then it happens!

It is a happening; it is not a doing. Nobody ever attains it. In fact it attains you, not that you attain it. When you are available it simply jumps on you, surrounds you, overwhelms you, overfloods you and takes you away... and you are gone!

... You have come from there [the buddhist monastery]; that is very good. There you would have been striving and striving... there you would not have ever been able to relax.

Buddhists monasteries no more follow Buddha, buddhism no more belongs to Buddha. They have all become ego-trips. That’s how it happens to every religion: when the master is gone it becomes corrupted... and the master has been gone so long, two thousand years have passed. Great corruption has happened; it is no more Buddha.

If you want to find Buddha never go to a buddhist monastery. You can find him anywhere else but never in a buddhist monastery. If you want to find christ never go to a christian monastery. You can find him anywhere else but not in a christian monastery; that’s how things are.

Do a few groups, start meditating here. Vipassana is good – you have learned it, that is good – but it should be done in a totally different atmosphere. The method is of tremendous importance but before one can do vipassana one should go through some cathartic methods so all poison has been thrown out. When there is no poison, do vipassana and great things will be possible through it. But you have learned, that’s good; it will be used!

Whatsoever you have learned there will not be lost – it will be used in some higher synthesis; don’t be worried, mm? Do a few groups.

[Osho suggests cathartic groups and the visitor says he feels misunderstood.]

No, no, not at all... not at all, not at all! I have understood. You may not have been able to say what you wanted to say but I have seen what you want to say.

[The visitor answers: I did not want to say anything.]

Then perfectly good! Then how can one misunderstand you, mm?

... If you don’t want to say anything, then there is no problem... but as I see it you have strived hard, and striving always fails.

... It has not left you yet! You may have left it – that I am not saying – but that doesn’t matter: it is there!

Do you think everything has gone from your mind?

... It is there. It has to be dropped, it has to be completely cleaned. Be here – it will be cleaned, mm?

And think of sannyas. Whenever the idea comes, think of it, mm? But this is a totally different kind of initiation. It has nothing to do with Leaving the world; it is not a renunciation. It is a different way of living in the world: going nowhere else, being here, but being in a totally different way. It only changes you, it doesn’t enforce any change in your circumstances. You can be a householder, you can be a husband, you can be a father; whatsoever you decide to be, you can be. This sannyas does not exclude anything; it is not monastic. It is very ’this-worldly’ because to me this and that world are not two separate worlds; there is just one world.

One can live rightly in it and then one grows; one can live wrongly in it, then one does not grow.

One can look rightly into it and one finds god herenow. One can go on being blind and one goes on missing god. Then people start projecting god as being somewhere else – some heaven, some nirvana, some moksha, somewhere else... but it is here!

This world is nirvana and there is no other world and there is no other nirvana.

So if you want to become a sannyasin,, think about it, or if you are ready right now, take a jump right now.

[The visitor says: I am already there! There is no jump to take.]

Then why have you come here? For what?

[The visitor answers: Just for fun.]

But I don’t have time for fun. There is no need to come here. Why? You should ask whether I want to have fun with you or not.

There is no need to come. If you are there already, perfectly good! I am happy about your being there. Remain there happily! There is no point – even being here has no point, mm? Then that’s good.

CHAPTER 27

Love is the bridge between the human and the divine

29 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Keshava.... It is Krishna’s name and literally it means ’the long-haired one’. He has many names, each name to indicate just one of his qualities.

He is called ’the long-haired one’ because he was one of the greatest incarnations of the feminine spirit, of yin. That’s why you don’t see the beard and you don’t see the moustache – just the long hairs. Not that he had no beard, he was not suffering from any hormonal deficiency, but it is not depicted to show that the spirit is feminine, that the man is passive, that even in his action he is deeply in inaction... what the Chinese call ’wu wei’: action through inaction. He is doing but he is not a doer.

And Hindus have called him the greatest avatara, the most perfect, because when a man is a man perfection is not possible. One can be perfect only when one is in rest, passive. One is perfect only when one is not – so much in rest that one is not. There is no tension: even the tension of the ego, even the feeling that ’I am’, has disappeared. Everything has relaxed... only in that relaxation can god come and bloom in his totality. If you are still there, then in the same proportion that you are, god will not be expressed through you.

So Rama is called a partial incarnation of god, Krishna is called the total incarnation... and the meaning is significant. He is the incarnation of the feminine spirit. He is a very very feminine man, very beautiful, very soft, very round – hence ’the long-haired one’, to show his softness, to show his feminine beauty.

Mm? you must have seen: even his clothes are very feminine. He wears ornaments too and his clothes are very fancy – not as a male ordinarily wears clothes; all the clothes that he uses are feminine. His dance, his song, are all feminine... he is the most feminine of men.

But a question can be asked – has been asked many times down the ages – that if god wanted to reincarnate, to come down to earth, and if only in passivity it can be allowed totally, then why didn’t he choose a woman? There is some reason in it.

Action has not to be discarded; action has to be absorbed in inaction. Action has to be there but has to come out of the inner nothingness. So god can come only when the duality is there and yet transcended. Hence krishna is a man yet feminine – paradoxical and yet transcendental, combining both. If you want a parallel from the woman’s side, then you will have to find someone like Joan of Arc: a woman, but very male. If she had been in india she would have been thought of as an incarnation of god. The West missed; the woman was of tremendous value.

It was the same synthesis from the other side: she was feminine but she absorbed the whole male qualities. She became a warrior, lived like a man: she dressed like a man, she walked like a man, she behaved like a man. You will be surprised that not a single man had fallen in love with her, she was so manly. To think of her as a woman was difficult.

To me, Krishna and Joan of Arc are the polar opposites. Krishna is a man and full of the femininity, overflowing with it; that is the meaning of the name keshava.

’Kesh’ means hairs and ’keshava’ means the long-haired one: Krishna the feminine one. A good name... a beautiful name. Create that synthesis in you, fulfill your name. Become more and more passive, become more and more soft, and create softer qualities: love, compassion, sympathy, empathy. Create more grace.

[The sannyasin is unable to speak.]

You have said it without saying and I have heard it. Mm? just get in tune with things here. Eat as much as you can of me and drink as much as you can of me – let that be your sadhana here. Many things are going to happen....

Ananda means bliss and anuloka means a small world – a small world of bliss... and that’s what everybody is meant to become. It depends totally on you; the energy is available. You can make a small world of misery or you can make a small world of bliss out of it... and both are made of the same energy, the same stuff; it is the same brick.

Rightly put those bricks make bliss; wrongly put they create a mess. And if a man knows how to put things rightly even poison becomes nectar... and vice versa. So nobody is really poor – everybody is born rich – but a few people never put their energies in a right way. They have a beautiful instrument but they only create noise – they never learn how to play it.

Life has to be understood like a very subtle musical instrument – and meditation is the way to play upon it.

Would you like to say something to me?

[The new sannyasin says: I came here because I love a girl who took sannyas last night.]

Mm mm, very good. That’s very good! Your love affair has brought you to a greater love affair! Each stone becomes a step and you go higher.

Just be here, mm? Just be in love with me and soon you will see that your love will change: it will have a different depth and quality.

[A sannyasin who is leaving says she feels very scattered, that she doesn’t feel ready to surrender: I run myself in circles... I’m always running.]

Nothing is wrong in it!

Just enjoy it; that’s the way you are! Trying to do something against it will simply create a conflict and anguish... and through conflict, one starts doing violence to one’s own natural flow.

That’s the way you are; nothing is wrong in it! You have energy, you are overflowing too much with it, so you go here, there and you go on running... but nothing is wrong. Running is a spiritual activity!

You have to learn to accept it; that will be your surrender. Surrender is not something that is against you. How can the surrender be against you7 You are thinking as if by surrender it is meant that you have to change your natural way totally; that is riot right. Surrender means to be totally natural.

If you surrender to me, that simply means I will tell you to be totally relaxed with your being. If it takes you to the north, go to the north; if it takes you to the south. go to the south. Let it have its joy and one day you will be finished with it, but that will not be by force. That will come through more awareness, experience... and that has nothing to do with fighting.

Run as much as you want: just remain alert and don’t create any fight with yourself. I am against all fight. Fight creates split and a split inevitably leads towards schizophrenia, madness. Be together...

and by being together I don’t mean that you have to put all your fragments together.

If this is the way, that your fragments are scattered, then be scattered and accept the fact of scatteredness, and in that very acceptance you will see something like a unity arising. It will not be a forced unity, it will not be like one thing; it will be more like an orchestra: many instruments playing but in deep rhythm, in a togetherness.

If unity is not like an orchestra it is going to be very dull. There are people who are not scattered but they are very dull people, stupid people. The day you feel that a kind of transcendence has arisen, all your fragments are still there but they move in a certain rhythm together; they have all fallen in one wavelength. They have not become one; now they simply sing together – a chorus has arisen.

The singers are scattered but they are singing a chorus, together. In the song they are together, otherwise they are all separate.

That sound cannot come by effort, by discipline. It comes only through deep rest, relaxation with your being. The way you are, accept it. And you have all the blessings: you go as much as you want to go and come as much as you want to come. Soon it will disappear, but don’t force it otherwise it will linger; it will continue in your unconscious.

The desire is there so let it be finished. Every desire has to be lived to its extreme. Desire is the way towards desirelessness. So if you go half-heartedly this desire will continue for a longer period.

[She answers: Not only do I go with my energy but I often stop half way with it. I have so much confusion!]

Yes, I understand; it is there.

It is with everybody! It is just that when there is a low-energy type person it is not so prominent – it is there; but when there is a high-energy person it is very prominent. Mm? you are a high-energy person. Feel grateful to god that you have enough energy to rush all over the world. So rush! –

nothing to worry about!

[Osho explains the meaning of prem anudharma. Prem means love and anudharma means religion

– religion of love. That’s my religion... and my sannyasin has to be an incarnation of love in all dimensions of life. That is the quality I would like you to grow. By becoming loving you will become my sannyasin.... ]

I don’t ask you to be prayerful – prayer comes on its own when one is loving; and I don’t ask you to go into a temple, because those are just outer things. The inner temple consists of love. And I don’t ask you to think of a god. Only contemplate love and by and by you will see that god is becoming more and more visible to you. It is through love that we reach god; there is no other way.

The english word ’religion’ is not as good as ’dharma’, because religion gives the feel of a doctrine, a dogma, scripture, theology. Dharma exactly means ’the way’; it does not give the idea of a dogma.

Religion means christianity, islam, hinduism; dharma does not mean, cannot mean, islam, cannot mean christianity, cannot mean hinduism. Dharma means the essential of all religions, the very essence of religion... just the fragrance of all the religions, the core of it.

And if you want to know the core of religion, there is no other way to know it except through love.

Love is the bridge between the human and the divine. The moment you are totally in love you are no more here. You are no more part of the world of things – you are raised high; you move into another dimension, you are transported. When you fall from love you are again in the world of things. When you rise in love you are in the world of persons; that is the revolution.

When you are in this world without love you live among things; even persons are like things then.

Your wife is a thing, your friend is a thing; you use them. But when you rise in love even things are no more things. Even the chair has a personality, even the pillar is no more just a thing. You cannot neglect it, you cannot ignore it.

Then the whole existence is full of personality... throbbing with it. Everything has a soul because everything deep down exists in god, everything participates in god. How can it be otherwise?

Everything partakes of god. In that very partaking it becomes a person.

So that is the meaning of your name. Let this be the meaning of your life too. It needs only a little alertness and things start changing.

CHAPTER 28

The more you flow into existence, the more it flows into you 30 June 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

Deva shakta. It means divine energy. And you have to play with your energy as much as possible.

Create more and more loving intimacy with your energy, allow it all kinds of play. Sitting silently, let kriya happen and don’t inhibit it, don’t repress it; that is the way to commune with god. Don’t be miserly; be open and flowing. The more you flow into existence, the more existence will flow into you: it is always in the same proportion. Whatsoever you sow, you reap and whatsoever you give, you get.

So if you want to get more energy give more energy; if you want to get more love give more love.

If you want the existence to shower on you in great torrents of bliss, then make people blissful wherever you go. With whomsoever you commune remember only one thing: make people blissful, bring some joy to them... and it is so easy to bring joy to people.

It is so easy to be kind and loving, it is so easy to be happy; it costs nothing, but just miserliness has been taught to us. We very reluctantly give ourselves to anybody – not even to those who we love.

With them too, we are holding, as if, if we lose something we will never get it again. We are hoarders, and out of hoarding fear arises, and because of fear you become more of a hoarder. By and by you lose contact with divine energy, and it is available everywhere! You just start pouring: from one end you start pouring and from another end you start getting it. And when energy circulates it keeps you vibrant.

It is like the circulation of the blood. When new fresh, air goes on coming into your room, your room has a liveliness. When a pool becomes stagnant it starts dying; it becomes dirty, unhygienic.

Close the doors and windows of the room and you are closing doors to life and to the sun and to the air. Soon you will be living in stale air, and nobody else is responsible except you. Those windows are there to be opened! These senses are our windows, this body is our house; we have to open all these windows.

Pour yourself into existence and you will be surprised: the moment you pour yourself, something goes immediately into you from some unknown source, something is poured into you, because nature abhors a vacuum. That is a very simple scientific law, and it is as exact about spirituality as it is about the material world: nature abhors a vacuum.

So create as much of a vacuum as you can and you will be filled by more and more energy, and fresh energy, vital energy. And once you have learned the secret you become an emperor. That is the meaning of the word’swami’: you become a master. You know now there is nothing to lose: the more you lose, the more you get.

Jesus says, ’Those who are afraid to lose themselves will lose and those who are ready to lose themselves will gain’! He is proposing a very fundamental law.

Prem means love, shakti means power. Love is the only power there is; all else is impotence and all else makes us weak. All else that is known as power is only pretension.

Money is not power, prestige is not power, respectability is not power, political status is not power.

These are just ways to hide our impotence, these are ways to cover the impotence that is there.

These are ways to hide our deep-rooted inferiority complex from the world; but they only hide, they never destroy it.

So others may think you are very powerful because you have a big car and a big house and a big yacht and this and that, and a big bank balance. Others may think you are powerful, but you know; how can you deceive yourself? You can deceive the whole world but you cannot deceive yourself because you know that deep down you are just nothing. All those things are there outside. Others may be deceived because they watch from the outside, but you know yourself from within and there the yacht cannot reach, the car cannot reach, the bank balance cannot reach.

So a very very strange phenomenon happens: the richer a man becomes, the poorer he starts feeling. In contrast to all his riches all around he starts feeling very very poor. The more powerful a man becomes, the more powerless he starts feeling within himself. Now he has the contrast: he can see how powerless he is. So all so-called superior people suffer from inferiority. Their dreams are full of inferiority, shadowed by inferiority.

There is only one thing that makes a man really powerful, mm? – that is love.

And another strange thing: when love makes you powerful you become humble. A powerful man is always humble. A powerful man is naturally, inevitably unpretending; he is not presumptuous. He does not claim... he need not claim. He never tries to prove; he is so there is no point in proving.

People who try to prove are the people who know they are not. The man of power is unassuming.

The really powerful man is one who has no need to prove to anybody that he is powerful. Even a small child can slap him and he will not retaliate because he has no need even to defend. He knows he is powerful – he will not feel insulted; nobody can insult him.

People can insult you only because deep down you know their insults are true. But when you know they are not true, then they don’t relate to you, they don’t refer to you; they are just pointless, meaningless.

So love gives power but in a very new way. The quality is different: the quality is that of a humble man.

Jesus is powerful but so humble. His disciples were waiting thinking that he might show them some miracle when he was crucified. They thought he was the man of power – and they knew that he was.

They had seen a thousand and one miracles just happening around him; now was the time to prove his power! They were hiding there in the crowd, waiting – waiting for the right moment when jesus would prove that he was the son of god and would descend from the cross, untouched, whole.

But jesus simply died. Nothing happened. That is the miracle! He didn’t try to prove; that’s the miracle. If he had done something he would have been an ordinary man on a power trip. If he had tried to prove his power he would be no more special than those ordinary disciples; the logic would have been the same. No, he simply relaxed and died; he died like such an ordinary man. That is real power.

To me, his resurrection does not matter much; that seems to be the story that is needed by the disciples. Whether it happened or not is not the point, but it was needed by the disciples very much.

If he didn’t resurrect there would have been no christianity.

So whether he resurrected or not is pointless. The disciples managed a story that he resurrected –

then everything was okay: he did the miracle. He had come out of death: he proved his power.

So christians are very defensive about resurrection. If you disbelieve the resurrection you cannot be a christian; the whole christianity topples down because it depends on power. And the real miracle and the real power happened on the cross in the moment jesus said, ’Thy kingdom come, thy will be done’.... That was the prayer of a humble man, of a really powerful man. In that moment he proved that he was the son of god; no other proof was needed.

So, when power comes through love, it is humble. It has no qualities of the so-called powerful man; it is unassuming. It does not leave a trace behind it. It leaves no shadow even, it makes no shadow: it moves as if it is not. That’s the beauty: love makes you egoless, and then comes power. If power comes before love the ego will absorb it and will become very very stubborn.

So always approach shakti power through love; that is one of my fundamentals.

Approach

knowledge through love, approach power through love, approach god through love... approach everything through love and you will never be in any way going wrong. Approach everything through love and that will be a great protection.

Love protects and keeps you on the right track because a loving heart cannot go wrong; that is impossible.

[Osho explains the meaning of anand yatra: a journey to bliss, a pilgrimage to bliss. My whole effort here is to make you pilgrims on the path of bliss. To me bliss is god. To me, to be blissful is the only virtue, and to be miserable, the only sin.]

People think that they are miserable because they have committed sins in the past; that is not true.

By being miserable they are committing the sin right now, and if you cannot start being happy you become virtuous because a happy person cannot harm. Only a sad person can harm, only a sad person becomes a sadist: only a miserable person starts looking for other’s misery. And a miserable person wants everybody to be miserable; only then does he feel good, comparatively. If he sees that everybody is miserable, then he can relax; then he can say ’So I’m not wrong in some way; this is how things are’.

A happy person creates a happy world around him because happiness can exist only when there are many people happy. It cannot exist alone like an island. If you want to be happy you would have to make your husband happy, your children happy, your mother, your father happy, your neighbourhood, otherwise it will be impossible because we are related with everybody. A happy person learns one basic thing: that you can remain happy if you create a happy world around you... and that’s what virtue is.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28